How to ship a Yurt from Kazakhstan to Canada? Any experience?

[hierony]

Ah, you probably know the shipping ropes much better than I! Kazakhstan looks pretty far from the major ports, too, sadly.

I've heard it can be more economical to buy a bunch of yurts just to fill the container full, then sell them to people for cost+shipping, maybe with some small profit A full 6m/20 ft traditional yurts here usually go for $5-8k, with insulation--only problem would be finding buyers. For shipping, I got quotes from Vantage Point Services, ShipAg, and Service Shipping. I think ShipCo actually handled most of the logistics, but Hapag-Lloyd of course did most of the physical shipping in all likelihood.

I opted out of the synthetic felt my yurt maker offered--I really didn't like the idea of it catching fire and raining down on me. I guessed it all weighed ~500 kg (based on Rainer/Pacific Yurts shipping weights), but I dropped that to 400 kg and nobody seemed to notice/care (cost determined by volume). That included the frame (ash khana, pine uni/toono, mostly pine door), a light cotton liner, and a heavy cotton canvas that weighs ~110 lbs/50 kg (I think it's around 500 g/m^2). I got some wool blanket material that I'm sewing into two layers for insulation--that way I can put such things as cotton blankets, cardboard, loose wool, whatever between the two layers for added

insulation

.