International Shipping in 2026: A Small Business Reality Check

There is something pretty wonderful about packing an order here on the Central Coast of NSW and knowing that a few weeks later it might be opened in Belgium, Canada, New Zealand, the UK or somewhere else entirely.

Over the past year, we’ve quietly noticed more Made In Hemp parcels heading overseas. We haven’t run a huge international campaign or built warehouses around the world. People have simply found us, found something they liked, and decided that ordering it all the way from Australia was worthwhile.

We love that.

But in 2026, the world of international shopping is changing — and as a small Australian business, we’re learning our way through those changes alongside our customers.

International Shopping Made the World Feel Very Small

Not that long ago, buying something from a small shop on the other side of the world felt fairly adventurous.

Now we barely think twice about it.

You can discover a tiny Australian clothing brand from your lounge room in Europe, order Japanese stationery from Sydney, or find the exact obscure kitchen gadget you’ve been searching for from a business halfway around the planet.

It has created opportunities for small businesses like ours that simply didn’t exist a generation ago.

For Made In Hemp, it means someone who has been searching for a particular hemp shirt, a pair of hemp socks or one of our Australian-made skincare products can find us without needing to live anywhere near one of our stores.

That connection is something we very much want to keep.

Then the Rules Started Changing

International parcels have always been subject to the rules of the country they’re entering. VAT, GST, customs duty, import restrictions and postal clearance fees are certainly not new concepts.

What is changing is the way many countries are treating smaller ecommerce parcels.

One example is the European Union. From 1 July 2026, the EU removed its previous customs-duty exemption for many low-value ecommerce imports under €150 and introduced a temporary €3 customs duty based on the different tariff categories contained within a parcel.

VAT still applies according to the rules and rates of the destination country, and local postal or customs services may also charge their own processing or clearance fees.

Other markets, including the United States, have also been changing the way overseas ecommerce parcels are assessed.

The result is an international shipping landscape that is considerably more complicated than simply putting a stamp on a box.

A Small Parcel to Belgium Taught Us Quite a Lot

Recently, we sent a relatively small Made In Hemp order to a customer in Belgium.

She had already paid her international postage to us at checkout. When the parcel arrived in Belgium, however, the local postal service asked her to pay a further €51.16 before delivery.

That surprised her.

It surprised us too.

The breakdown was:

• €6.00 import duty
• €21.50 Bpost customs processing fee
• €23.66 Belgian VAT
• €51.16 total

What was particularly interesting to us was that the actual customs duty was only €6. The much larger final amount came from the combination of local VAT and the postal service’s customs-processing charge.

And it highlighted something important: even when we know the value, weight and contents of a parcel here in Australia, we cannot always know exactly what another country’s customs authority or postal service will charge once it arrives.

So, Is This About Encouraging People to Shop Locally?

To an extent, that is one of the effects.

The European Union describes its recent customs reforms as an effort to create fairer competition, improve product compliance and safety, and modernise a customs system dealing with an extraordinary volume of low-value ecommerce parcels.

There is an argument there that we can understand.

As an Australian small business, we’ve spent years watching local retailers compete with enormous volumes of very cheap products shipped directly into Australia from overseas. Local businesses have wages, rents, taxes, product standards and all the other costs involved in operating here.

So the idea that imported products should play by comparable rules isn't particularly outrageous.

It just feels rather different when you suddenly discover that you’re the overseas retailer.

Apparently that’s us now.

Then There’s the Amazon Effect

There’s another part of international shopping that doesn’t get talked about enough: enormous retailers have completely changed our perception of what shipping should cost.

We’ve become accustomed to free shipping, overnight shipping and international delivery prices that sometimes seem impossibly cheap.

For a company operating at Amazon-scale, there are warehouses around the world, enormous freight contracts, local distribution networks, sophisticated customs systems and millions of parcels moving through those networks.

A small Australian retailer operates rather differently.

When you order something from Made In Hemp overseas, there isn’t another Made In Hemp warehouse conveniently sitting around the corner from you.

Someone here genuinely picks your order, checks it, packs it at our Long Jetty store and sends that individual parcel from Australia through the international postal network.

We simply cannot compete with multinational shipping rates.

But cheap freight isn’t the only reason to decide where you shop.

There Are Still Some Pretty Good Reasons to Shop Small

Small businesses can’t always win on scale. Thankfully, scale isn’t everything.

When you shop with a specialist small business:

• You can ask questions of people who actually know the products.
• You can request measurements before ordering a piece of clothing.
• You can ask what an ingredient is doing in a skincare formula.
• You can find niche products that may never make sense for a massive retailer to stock.
• You support the people developing, selecting, packing and standing behind those products.
• And when something unusual happens to your parcel halfway around the world, an actual human being looks into what happened.

That last one has felt particularly relevant this week.

Small businesses survive because customers see value in something beyond absolute lowest price — whether that is quality, knowledge, unusual products, personal service, sustainability, provenance or simply knowing who they are buying from.

We think those things still matter.

What Are We Doing About International Shipping?

Mostly: watching, learning and adapting.

International customs is an ever-changing landscape at the moment, and we’re monitoring changes closely to make international ordering as seamless as we reasonably can for both our customers and ourselves.

Our international shipping information now makes a much clearer distinction between the postage paid to send a parcel from Australia and any taxes, duties, customs-clearance charges or carrier fees that may be applied by the destination country.

We’re also using the developing Australia Post and Zonos system, which allows applicable duties and taxes to be prepaid for some eligible destinations rather than being unexpectedly collected from the customer at the other end.

That feature is still only available for selected destinations and shipment types, but we’re hopeful that coverage will continue to expand.

Where prepaid import costs are available to us, we want to use the technology to make the total cost clearer before your parcel begins its journey.

Where they aren’t, we’ll provide as much information as we can so customers can make an informed decision before ordering.

Should You Be Worried About Ordering Internationally?

No — but we do think you should be informed.

This isn’t a story about every international parcel suddenly becoming prohibitively expensive.

It’s a story about a system changing.

Some countries have relatively straightforward import arrangements. Others may apply VAT or GST. Some have duty thresholds. Some postal services charge customs-processing fees. Increasingly, systems are also being developed that allow these costs to be calculated and paid before the parcel arrives.

The exact outcome depends on where you live and what you order.

Our job is not to frighten people away from ordering internationally. It’s to avoid pretending that the shipping charge shown on an Australian website is necessarily the very last cost that could ever be associated with an international parcel.

We’d much rather tell you that clearly before you order.

Borders Are Becoming a Little More Noticeable Again

International ecommerce made the world feel remarkably small.

Someone sitting in Belgium can discover a hemp business on the Central Coast of Australia, find exactly the product they’ve been looking for, place an order and have us packing it here at Long Jetty.

We still think that’s pretty amazing.

The rules around moving that parcel from our door to yours may be becoming a little more complicated, but the connection itself isn’t becoming any less worthwhile.

So we’ll keep learning. We’ll keep monitoring the international shipping landscape. We’ll keep adopting better systems as they become available. And, wherever it remains practical, we’ll keep sending hemp around the world.

Amazon might always beat us on freight.

We’re fairly confident we can beat them on knowing who packed your parcel.