Brian Canup

Brian Canup is a former Editorial & Research Assistant at Trade Finance Global (TFG). He graduated with an MA in International Political Economy from King’s College London, and a BA in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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CY is short for ‘Container Yard’, which is where containers are stored on the terminal or dry port before they are loaded or offloaded from a ship. Containers are either stored for loading to be transported elsewhere, or offloaded as they arrive into the port or terminal.

What is a CY-CY Shipment?

Often Bills of Lading or Letters of Credit have the terms /CY after the port names on them. CY/CY essentially means ‘Container Yard to Container Yard’, referring to the Carrier’s port or terminal where goods are dispatched and the delivery port or terminal where a consignee accepts the goods.

A CY/CY shipment term simply tells the shipper the port at which the containers are getting delivered to, as well as the end destination of the containers, so that it is clear to the shipper, exporter and customer where responsibility lies when transporting containers.

CY-CY Container Services

Another term used in shipping, CY/CY container services include door to door or house to house services – which are those that extend the CY/CY Shipment from the premises of the seller right through to the customer’s door, rather than just at the port or terminal.

Difference between CY and CFS

In general, container yards (CY) are used for full container load (FCL) shipments before and after they are loaded.
Container freight station is mainly used for less than container load (LCL) shipments where the goods need to be consolidated before being loaded on board and de-consolidated after they are off-loaded from the vessel.

Here are the four main configurations of CY and CFS for shipments and the situations where they would primarily be used.

CY/CY

A container yard-container yard (CY/CY) shipment is an FCL shipment where the packed containerised cargo gets collected at the container yard of one origin port and is delivered to the container yard of the destination port.

These shipments can also be referred to as FCL/FCL shipments and will have a single shipper and consignee.

CFS/CFS

CFS/CFS shipments are generally for LCL shipments that need to be consolidated together at the origin port CFS before shipping and then de-consolidated back into their original groupings at the destination port CFS after arrival.

These shipments can also be referred to as LCL/LCL shipments and generally have multiple shippers and multiple consignees.

CY/CFS

Shipments can also be sent with CY/CFS terms on the bill of lading.
When this is the case it typically means that an FCL is sent from a single seller that is then de-consolidated at the destination port’s container yard in order for LCL quantities to ultimately be delivered to multiple consignees.

These types of shipments are also sometimes referred to as FCL/LCL

CFS/CY

Shipments with the bill of lading term of CFS/CY are effectively the opposite.

Under this term, LCL shipments will pass through the origin port’s CFS to be consolidated and then sent to the destination port’s CY where they will be collected by the consignee.

Also referred to as LCL/FCL shipments, these generally have multiple sellers but a single consignee.

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