Bonaire is a special municipality of the Netherlands, not an independent country, and that single constitutional fact shapes every line of a paving order. The island uses the US dollar as its official currency and has done since 1 January 2011. Dimensions are normally handled in metric, following Dutch practice. It files import declarations with Douane Caribisch Nederland. And it charges no import duty at all on goods, while applying an 8 percent general expenditure tax at the border instead. For a supplier loading in the United States, that combination strips out most of the guesswork that normally sits between a quoted price and a delivered one.
The second fact is the sea route. Kralendijk receives containerized freight directly from Florida on a weekly service that has been running since 1982, which the carrier describes as direct and non-transshipped. A container of paving that leaves Port Everglades on a Saturday is alongside at Kralendijk on the Thursday. Five days. That is the entire crossing. Everything else on this page, from slab depth to permit timing, sits on top of a supply line that is unusually short and unusually predictable for an island market of this size.
The Saturday Sailing From Port Everglades
King Ocean Services has operated a dedicated ABC service to Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire since 1982, and it is the spine of any stone order landing here. The pattern is fixed and easy to plan against. The vessel departs Port Everglades in Florida every Saturday, calls Oranjestad on the Tuesday, Willemstad on the Wednesday, and Kralendijk on the Thursday. Bonaire is the third call, five days out. The service is described as direct and non-transshipped, which in practice means your crates are not opened, restowed or set down on an intermediate quay before they reach the island.
Equipment matters more for stone than for most cargo. The service carries 20ft, 40ft and 45ft dry containers alongside flat rack, open top and break bulk options. Stone is dense, so a paving order almost always reaches the weight limit of a 20ft box long before it fills the box by volume. Oversized slabs, tall crated bundles and anything that will not pass cleanly through a container door are exactly what the flat rack and open top exist for. Booking runs through the carrier ABC desk, and documentation cut-offs fall between Wednesday and Friday depending on cargo type, so paperwork prepared early in the week catches that Saturday departure rather than the following one.
- Departure: Port Everglades, Florida, every Saturday, on a weekly rotation
- Kralendijk arrival: Thursday, a five-day transit, described as direct and non-transshipped
- Intermediate calls: Oranjestad Tuesday and Willemstad Wednesday, neither involving rehandling of your cargo
- Equipment: 20ft, 40ft and 45ft dry boxes plus flat rack, open top and break bulk
- Documentation cut-offs: Wednesday to Friday by cargo type, so file the paperwork before the pallets move
Zero Duty, Eight Percent ABB And How To Budget For It
This is the part of a Bonaire order that surprises anyone who has imported into other Caribbean markets. There is no import duty on Bonaire. The tax authority sets the import tax rate at nil for all goods, and there are no separate customs duties sitting behind that position. There is also no VAT and no BTW here, because the BES islands sit outside the Dutch and EU VAT area altogether.
What you do pay is ABB, the Algemene Bestedingsbelasting or general expenditure tax. On Bonaire, ABB on the delivery and import of goods is 8 percent. Services are taxed at 6 percent and insurance at 7 percent. The detail that decides whether your landed-cost model is right is the base: ABB at import is charged on the customs value, meaning the value of the goods plus insurance plus transport costs. It behaves like a levy on the CIF figure rather than on the ex-works price of the stone. An import declaration is filed with Douane Caribisch Nederland, and both businesses and private individuals are liable for ABB on import unless a specific exemption applies to the consignment.
Two cautions before you build a spreadsheet. First, do not borrow rates from the other islands. Saba and Sint Eustatius run 6 percent on goods and 4 percent on services, and Aruba and Curacao are separate jurisdictions where ABB does not apply at all. Second, local declarants and clearing agents do operate on Bonaire, but confirm with your own agent what your particular consignment needs rather than assuming a statutory requirement either way. If you would rather have the arithmetic laid out for you, we can price a container for Kralendijk with goods, insurance and freight shown on separate lines, which is precisely the breakdown the ABB calculation needs.
- Import duty on Bonaire: nil, across all goods
- ABB on goods and imports: 8 percent; services 6 percent; insurance 7 percent
- ABB base at import: customs value, meaning goods plus insurance plus transport
- No VAT and no BTW; the BES islands sit outside the Dutch and EU VAT area
- Declaration filed with Douane Caribisch Nederland by businesses and private importers alike
Kralendijk Port And Moving Pallets To Site
Kralendijk works two piers plus a smaller inter-island jetty. The North Pier is 69 m long and 15 m wide with 10 m of water alongside, taking vessels up to 50,000 DWT. The South Pier runs to 120 m in length and 14 m in width, carries 12 m of depth and a Ro-Ro ramp, and handles vessels up to 115,000 GRT. The ferry and inter-island jetty takes craft up to 100 m overall with 5.5 m draft and 5,000 GRT. Across the port as a whole the maximum accepted vessel is 115,000 DWT at 12.19 m draft and 320 m length overall, three ships can be worked at the same time, and the terminal runs around the clock with container handling equipment and warehousing available on site.
That warehousing is worth thinking about before the box lands. Stone is one of the few materials where parking a loaded container on a small plot is a genuine problem. The pallets are heavy, they need hard standing that will not rut under a forklift, and faces should not sit collecting windblown dust and salt spray for weeks before they are laid. On a compact island where lay-down space on a villa plot is usually tight, it is worth asking your carrier and agent early whether part of an order can be staged at the port and drawn down in lifts rather than tipped on site at once. Access, unloading equipment and any weight limit on your particular approach should be confirmed with your carrier and your contractor rather than assumed, because that is a site-by-site question and not an island-wide one.
- North Pier: 69 m long, 15 m wide, 10 m depth alongside, up to 50,000 DWT
- South Pier: 120 m long, 14 m wide, 12 m depth, Ro-Ro ramp, up to 115,000 GRT
- Inter-island jetty: 100 m maximum length, 5.5 m draft, 5,000 GRT
- Port maximum: 115,000 DWT, 12.19 m draft, 320 m overall, three vessels worked at once
- Terminal operates 24 hours with container handling gear and warehousing on site
Reading Bonaire Exposure Zones Before You Choose A Paver
Bonaire is semi-arid. Annual rainfall is only 350 to 450 mm, roughly 14 to 18 inches, with a rainy season running October to January and the wettest weeks falling in November and December. A northeast trade wind blows more or less constantly at around 7 m/s, about 25 km/h or 15 mph. Put those two facts side by side and the exposure story writes itself: salt arrives on the wind every day of the year, and there is very little rain to wash it away again. The decay mechanism you are specifying against here is salt crystallization inside the pore structure of the stone, not the freeze-thaw cycling that governs paving choices in cooler markets.
The island sits at roughly 12 degrees north, outside the core hurricane belt, and the ABC islands carry the lowest historic hurricane exposure in the region. That is not the same thing as immunity. Hurricane Lenny in November 1999 remains the only hurricane on record to form inside the Caribbean Sea and track east-northeast, and it struck the normally sheltered leeward west coast, causing coral and beach erosion including at Pink Beach. Hurricane Omar brought tropical-storm conditions and further reef damage in October 2008. A west-facing terrace here is sheltered on almost every ordinary day and exposed on the rare extraordinary one, and edge restraint should be detailed for the second case rather than the first.
- Windward east side: continuous trade wind, salt aerosol and open swell, so specify the lowest-absorption units available
- Leeward west side around Kralendijk: sheltered in normal weather, but Lenny and Omar both proved the exception exists
- Shoreline strip: the Marine Park boundary begins at the high-water mark, so terrace work at the water edge is work at the park edge
- Inland and kunuku plots: less salt load, more windblown dust, and ground that is rough rather than graded
- Enclosed courtyards and pool decks: lower salt, higher surface temperature, and mostly barefoot traffic
Formats, Depths And Duty Ratings
Dimensions on Bonaire are metric while money is in US dollars, and that split catches out suppliers who quote in one system and ship in the other. We work to both: nominal sizes in millimeters, coverage in square meters, prices in dollars, no conversion argument at the end. The practical question underneath the format choice is duty rating, meaning what the surface actually has to carry, and that drives thickness before it drives anything decorative.
As a working guide, pedestrian terraces, pool surrounds and paving that adjoins interior floors sit in the lighter thickness bands. Shared paths, service routes and anything a vehicle might occasionally cross move up a band. Driveways, aprons and turning areas either move up again in slab thickness or switch to small units bedded on concrete. Large-format slabs cover ground quickly and leave fewer joints for dust and salt film to gather in. Small units follow curves and falls without cutting. Curbs and edge units hold the whole assembly together, which on a windy island with short, intense rainfall events is a structural decision rather than a decorative one. You can see how the sizes fall across our stocked paving formats and then match them against the zone list above.
- Pedestrian terraces and pool decks: lighter slab thicknesses, textured face, tight tolerance for barefoot comfort
- Shared paths and service routes: a step up in thickness with a restrained edge and a bedding detail that does not rely on beach material
- Driveways and aprons: thicker slabs or small units on a concrete bed, sized for point loads and wheel scrub
- Curbs and edge restraints: specified with the field rather than after it, and set before the field goes down
- Steps, copings and thresholds: ordered as dimensioned pieces from the same lot so the tone carries through
Permits, The Spatial Plan And The Sixteen-Week Clock
Building on Bonaire runs through the Ruimtelijk Ontwikkelingsplan Bonaire, the spatial development plan adopted by the island council on 8 October 2010 and revised since, with a seventh revision recorded on the national regulations register. Since 1 July 2017 the operative building rules have been Chapter Two of the Wet VROM BES, the Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment Act BES, together with the BES Bouwbesluit, the Building Decree BES, which sets general standards for structural safety, user safety, fire safety and accessibility.
A bouwvergunning is issued by the bestuurscollege, which must decide within sixteen weeks of receiving an application and may extend that period once by up to eight weeks. Refusal grounds include conflict with the spatial development plan, a missing monument permit, and failure against the aesthetic or building-code requirements. For a paving package that timetable is your ordering calendar. Sixteen weeks of decision time, plus the five-day sailing, plus cutting and crating, means the stone selection wants to be settled early rather than treated as a finishing trade chosen once the walls are up. In the coastal zone, some works additionally require permission from the bestuurscollege in order to protect the values of the Marine Park, including anything that damages or removes natural vegetation, with limited exceptions for road and path maintenance and traditional agricultural use.
Nothing here is legal advice, and the right professional sequence is a local architect or contractor confirming which consents your particular parcel needs. What a supplier can usefully do is fit the production and shipping schedule around the decision you are waiting on, instead of asking you to gamble on it. In practice that means agreeing the specification and the quantities while the application sits with the bestuurscollege, holding the order, and releasing it to production once you have a decision date you trust.
Ordering Pavers For A Bonaire Project
A good Bonaire order starts from four numbers and one drawing: square meters by zone, duty rating for each zone, the finish you want underfoot, and the delivery window the permit allows. From there the crate plan and the container fill follow almost mechanically. Because ABB is calculated on goods plus insurance plus transport, a quotation that separates those three lines is a quotation you can check rather than take on trust, and it is also the document your declarant will thank you for.
Order the whole area in one go wherever the schedule allows it. Natural stone is quarried in blocks, and blocks vary, so a terrace bought now and extended in eighteen months will not be drawn from the same material even if the range name has not changed. On a five-day route that is an easy problem to avoid: buy the field, the steps, the copings and a sensible cutting allowance together, then blend across crates as the paving goes down rather than laying crate by crate. It costs nothing extra and it removes an avoidable source of disappointment months down the line.
Small samples are the cheapest step in the entire process. Handle the face, wet it, set it outside on the actual plot for a few weeks and look at it again in real island light with real island salt on it. That tells you more than any photograph, and on Bonaire, where salt is a permanent visitor rather than a seasonal one, it is the test that decides whether a specification holds up. Send us the zones, the square meters and the date your permit is expected, and we will build the shipment around that calendar.