Pre-shipment inspection in Nigeria: what it covers and what it costs
Verifra Team · · 3 min read
If you are buying goods you have not personally seen, the pre-shipment inspection (PSI) is the single most cost-effective check you can buy. It happens after production is finished and before the goods ship: the last moment when problems are still the supplier's problem, not yours.
What a PSI actually checks
A pre-shipment inspection is a structured comparison between what you ordered and what is about to ship. A trained inspector attends the factory or warehouse and works through:
- Quantity: cartons counted against the packing list and purchase order.
- Workmanship and defects: a statistically valid sample of units is pulled and examined against an agreed defect classification (critical, major, minor).
- Specification conformity: materials, dimensions, colours, labelling and functions checked against your PO or spec sheet.
- Packaging and marks: export cartons, inner packing, shipping marks and barcodes, because goods that arrive damaged were often packed wrong, not handled wrong.
The output is a report with photographs and measurements, stating what was observed against your specification. A good report does not tell you "the goods are fine". It tells you exactly what was found, so the decision stays yours.
The sampling standard
Serious inspections do not check every unit; they sample to ANSI/ASQ Z1.4, the same acceptance-sampling standard used by the major international inspection firms. You declare an AQL (an acceptable quality limit) for each defect class, and the standard dictates how many units to pull from a lot of your size and how many defects are tolerable before the lot fails. (We cover AQL in detail in a separate guide.)
When to book it
Book the PSI when goods are at least 80% complete and packed. Earlier, and the sample is not representative; later, and the container may already be booked, which pressures everyone to wave problems through. For higher-risk orders, pair the PSI with an initial production check at the start of the run. Catching a wrong material in week one is far cheaper than discovering it at the port.
What it costs in Nigeria
Verifra inspections in Nigeria and Ghana run at £120–£180 per man-day, depending on location and scope. A typical single-container PSI is one man-day. Compare that with the value of a 40-foot container of goods: the inspection usually costs less than half a percent of what it protects.
Everything Verifra observes is captured with geotagged, timestamped photos and video, hashed at the moment of capture, so the evidence in your report is the evidence the inspector collected, verifiably unaltered.
PSI inside an escrow deal
A PSI is useful on its own, and you can book one from Verifra without running your transaction through us. It becomes most powerful inside an escrow-protected deal: the release schedule can make a passed inspection the event that triggers a staged payment, so your money simply does not move if the goods fail. That is the heart of the Verifra protocol: releases against verified events, not promises.
Getting started
Create a Verifra account, choose Verifra Inspect, and book the service that matches where your order is in its life: initial production check, during-production inspection, pre-shipment inspection, or container loading supervision. You will see the exact fee before you commit.