COSCO Shipping free time at Lagos — Apapa
NGAPP · Nigeria. Nigeria runs short free time, weekly escalation and no weekend/holiday relief. Evidence that survives here is the timestamped transire approval, the terminal gate record and the line’s waiver correspondence.
COSCO Shipping · Lagos — Apapa · 40' dry (GP) · import
- Demurrage clock starts
- Discharge.
- Detention clock starts
- Gate-out.
- Weekend & holiday policy
- Calendar days. Sundays and public holidays give no relief on the carrier clock; only some Apapa terminals suspend their own storage clock on public holidays.
Escalation after free time
| Band | Chargeable days | Relative daily rate |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 after free time | 1–7 | 1× |
| Week 2 | 8–14 | 2× |
| Week 3+ | 15+ | 3× |
Bands are relative multipliers of the first chargeable day, not dollar rates — per-diem amounts are contract- and lane-specific. Use the carrier lookup below for the filed figure.
Enter the discharge / availability date and we count the free period the way this port counts it.
Before you quote — watch for
- COSCO and OOCL are separately filed despite the common group — check which brand issued the bill of lading.
- Nigeria runs short free time, weekly escalation and no weekend/holiday relief. Evidence that survives here is the timestamped transire approval, the terminal gate record and the line’s waiver correspondence.
- Terminal storage runs separately and generally starts on day 3 after discharge, so terminal storage and carrier demurrage overlap for most of the dwell.
- Carrier free time in Nigeria is 3–5 days, not the 5–7 typical elsewhere. Any calculation built on a global baseline overstates your free period.
- Rates escalate in weekly bands: roughly 1× in week one, 2× in week two, 3× from week three. One extra day across a band boundary re-prices every following day.
- Transire must be filed and approved before berthing/delivery. A late transire is an importer-side delay and is very hard to reverse — file it early and keep the timestamped approval.
- Waivers are realistically obtainable from the shipping line, rarely from the terminal. Address demurrage waiver requests to the line and dispute terminal storage on documented terminal-caused delays only.
- Terminal storage starts around day 3 while carrier demurrage is still running — check you are not paying two clocks for the same day.
Local mechanics verified on 2026-08-17 by Anyanwu Bede Obinna (Lagos, Nigeria), report SLX-AR-2026-0207-NG-R1. Day counts remain carrier-tariff derived; your service contract overrides them. COSCO e-business tariff lookup
Know the exact date, not just the free days
Enter your discharge date for COSCO Shipping at Lagos — Apapa and get the dated last free day plus per-day exposure — and a free email reminder three days out, one day out and the day it expires.
Last Free Day calculator