Duty Free Division

The Division

This Division sells duty & vat free goods, such as cigarettes, cigars, tobacco, beer, wines, spirits, perfume and luxury products to the North Sea oil & gas industry's rigs, platforms & support vessels, as well as to the North Sea fishing fleet & to general international shipping.

Offshore Oil and Gas Installations

These installations are the fixed production platforms and floating drilling rigs in the North Sea. Around 20,000 people currently work on these installations and they are entitled to buy goods free of duty & vat whilst offshore.

The products sold to these units are tobacco, perfume, luxury products, confectionery, soft drinks and toiletries.

Support Vessels

There are currently around 200 active standby and supply vessels operating in the North Sea.

The range of products available for sale onboard these vessels are the same as that sold on the rigs and platforms.

Fishing Vessels

The Scottish fishing fleet operates from Peterhead, Fraserburgh and other ports around Scotland. It also includes foreign vessels from Scandinavia, Iceland and the Faroe Isles, which land their fish at these ports. In addition to the range of products mentioned above, these vessels are also permitted to purchase duty free alcohol.

United Supplies have been supplying bonded goods to vessels operating out of Peterhead, Fraserburgh, Montrose and Aberdeen harbours since 1973.

The Company operates a 24 hour, 7 day a week service, at no additional cost to the customer, delivering direct to the vessels, utilising the Company's own transport fleet.

All Customs and Excise returns, documentation, paperwork and communications are transacted on a dedicated Customs and Excise approved state of the art computer system. This also enables electronic clearance of transactions to be made to Customs and Excise, greatly reducing the time taken to fulfil customer orders.