UK: ISS Develops Industry Leading Solution For EU Advanced Cargo Declarations

Inchcape Shipping Services (ISS), global leader in the provision of maritime support services, has continued to develop its offering for handling the EU Import Control System (EU ICS) for Advanced Cargo Declarations for each Customs territory within the European Union. This became mandatory from January 2011.

The above regulation adopted throughout the EU plus Norway and Switzerland, requires carriers to declare all cargo arriving in the region by providing an advance cargo declaration to the Customs office at the first port of entry. For the first six months of 2011 the EU agreed to a grace period allowing the new system to settle. This leniency period ends on 30 June 2011.

Through its experience in handling the Global Advance Manifest System (GAMS) declarations in the USA, the company was able to draw on this knowledge when creating a dedicated hub to lodge the EU ACD entries. As is usually the case with this type of legislation there were many technical difficulties to overcome in the early part of the year, however in successfully dealing with these issues the ISS team has built up considerable experience in the varied scenarios which can arise and now uses this experience to provide a quick and efficient service to its customers.

ISS has successfully helped its customers in many ways during both the implementation of the process and on a continuing basis. For example, the technical issues which arose in the submission of the declarations in the early stages were very time consuming for carriers. ISS was able to take on most of this burden and allow customers to focus on their core activity of operating their ships, whilst enjoying the peace of mind from knowing they were compliant.

For example, not all carriers had applied for their Economic Operators Registration and Identification (EORI) – an item that ISS quickly attended to. Another example was when the electronic Customs link is temporarily unavailable and with a vessel due to arrive, the potential to miss the declaration deadline was imminent, however through ISS’ own network the company was able to ensure the carrier was in full compliance and no delay was caused to the vessel’s schedule.

The EU ICS is managed both operationally and financially from ISS UK. However, in order to provide a dedicated and cost effective resource 24/7 ISS operates the technical declaration from an ISS Service Centre. The ISS Service Centre is a world leader in providing data entry and hub management solutions and is manned 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for completion of all declarations within the shortest time possible to ensure customers and their vessels comply with the legal time requirements for entry submissions.

From one point of contact ISS offers an EU-wide solution to complete declarations promptly in all countries within the territory.

And through careful management of its resources and the experience it has used to implement the hub solution, ISS offers a competitive tariff to its customers, whether for one declaration or for our volume clients where preferential terms can be negotiated subject to certain criteria.

Looking forward, ISS will continue to develop the hub offering to its clients to ensure future needs are met. It will also be capable of handling the export declarations which form part of the legislation and which are due to become compulsory later in 2011 for all cargo being loaded from EU ports.

Finaval, Tata and Trafigura are just a sampling of companies that have taken advantage of the ISS solution to ensure legal compliance.

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Source: Inchcape Shipping Services, June 15, 2011.