New shipping rates to France from 2025

The end of the cheap package up to 2 kg

Most Polish companies selling in France base their model on light packages. Until now, shipping up to 2 kg was relatively cheap, but the New Year's increases hit this segment the hardest. Our calculations show that the average base price increased by 6.8%, but that's not the end of the bad news. Carriers such as DPD or DHL changed the way fuel surcharges are calculated, which at current oil prices adds another 42 groszy to every shipment sent from a warehouse in Poland.

If you process 156 orders per month, your logistics costs will increase by about 340 PLN per month. For a small online store, this is an amount equivalent to losing the budget for 2-3 days of ads on Facebook or Amazon. Facts on the table: don't look for savings in packaging quality, because complaints in France are more expensive than the shipping itself. Instead, check contracts with brokers who, at a volume of over 47 packages per week, can negotiate rates 1.15 PLN lower than standard corporate price lists.

At Wisła Digital Strategy, we checked 47 real invoices of our clients from the last month. The conclusion is one: those who ship goods in oversized boxes lose the most. Carriers have begun to strictly enforce dimensional weight. If your box is 3 cm too wide, you may pay the rate for 5 kg, even if the product weighs only 800 grams. It simply doesn't pay off and needs to be changed before the February sales peak.

Even 42 groszy of additional fuel surcharge can eat the margin on cheap products.

The dimensional weight trap in 2025

The change in the dimensional weight divisor is a quiet revolution among couriers this year. Until now, the standard was a divisor of 4000 or 5000, but since January, two major players have switched to a divisor of 3500. What does this mean in practice? Your package with bedding or toys, which was previously settled as 2 kg, now falls into the 3 kg bracket. The difference in price is often 2.30 PLN net per piece. Selling 83 pieces a month, you leave nearly 200 PLN with the courier that you didn't have to spend.

Sellers on Amazon FR who use the FBM model (self-shipping) will feel this particularly acutely. Amazon strictly monitors deadlines, and the cheapest carriers who haven't raised rates yet often fail with punctuality. Choosing a courier with 48-72 hour delivery has become 11% more expensive than in October last year. No fluff: if your goods take up a lot of space but are light, you must immediately rethink the dimensions of master cartons.

It's also worth paying attention to Low Emission Zones (LEZ) in France. More and more cities, like Lyon or Marseille, are imposing fees on courier companies for entering with older cars. These costs are passed on to you as a 'city surcharge'. It ranges from 0.45 to 0.90 EUR per package. Check your customer panel to see if your courier company has added such fees for the last 3 weeks. They are often hidden in the 'additional fees' section and are hard to notice at first glance.

Returns logistics – this is where money escapes

The French return an average of 23% of purchased clothing and about 12% of electronics. New rates for 2025 also include return labels. The cost of a return package from Paris to Poland has increased by nearly 3.10 PLN. This hurts the most because you pay for a return twice – you lose the sales margin and pay extra for logistics. At Wisła Digital Strategy, we suggest a hybrid model to our clients: collecting returns at one point in France and shipping them by pallet to Poland once every 2 weeks.

Such consolidation allows you to lower the cost of a single return from 42 PLN to about 28 PLN. At a scale of 31 returns per month, you save over 430 PLN. These are hard data showing that optimization is not just looking for a cheaper courier, but above all changing processes. We count every penny, so we caution: check exactly what returns to the warehouse. Often the cost of disposing of goods locally in France is lower than pulling them back to Poland.

It might sound brutal, but for products valued under 60 PLN, return transport from France simply doesn't pay off. Better to offer the customer a 47% discount on their next purchase in exchange for keeping the goods or donating them to a local charity. Such an approach also builds a better brand image on the local market, which in 2025 will be crucial for your store's position in Amazon rankings.

Consolidating returns in France allows for saving 14 PLN on every package.

FBA or FBM – what to choose with the new rates?

Many of our partners ask: Piotr, with these fuel prices, does FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) still make sense? The answer is: it depends on rotation. Amazon also raised storage fees by nearly 9.2%, but their rates for local shipping within France increased much less than international courier rates from Poland. If your goods sell fast, FBA wins on cost because the package doesn't travel 1200 km across Europe with every order.

For products waiting for a buyer longer than 32 days, having your own warehouse in Poland remains a better solution, provided you have negotiated a good rate for line-haul transport. Facts on the table: the difference in shipping cost between FBA and shipping from Poland (FBM) for a 1 kg package is currently about 1.40 EUR in favor of Amazon. However, you must add the cost of delivering goods to the Amazon warehouse in France, which kills profitability for small deliveries.

At Wisła Digital Strategy, we currently manage 47 accounts on Amazon FR and see a trend of moving away from full FBA toward a mixed model. We keep the top-rotating 14 products in France and ship the rest of the assortment (the less frequently bought) directly from Poland. This allows for maintaining flexibility and not freezing cash in storage fees, which will grow every quarter in 2025. It simply pays off if you know how to calculate the margin on each SKU individually.