Dear Customer,
As you know at midnight the 31st Dec 2020 the BREXIT transition period ends, and the UK will have fully left the EU, deal or no deal. For many of you not exporting to the EU you may not see many changes to your present daily business, but there is one very important change that will impact on most if not all exporters regardless of the services they utilise.
As of the 1st Jan 2021 the UK becomes a third party country in its relationship with the EU and as such is required to comply with the ICS /ENS protocols (ICS – Import Control System – is the electronic security declaration management system for the importation of goods into the European Union customs territory).
Some of you may be aware of this if you have been dealing with Imports from outside the EU into the UK or EU member states.
The export shipping Lines are beholden to complete the ICS protocols before loading any cargo onboard a vessel destined for, transhipping in, or transiting via the EU.
As such we are required to provide all export information in the form of a ENS entry to the Control system and gain loading approval, 24 hours before the commencement of Loading operations. During this period, the ICS will either approve the cargo for loading, request more information or block the loading.
What do you need to provide and when?
• We require the FULL Bill of Lading information, Shipper, Consignee, Notify (if any), cargo description, quantity of packages, etc.
• As most, if not all shippers will be aware of the cargo they are shipping and to whom it is consigned, we are looking for customers to provide B/lading details as the cargo is booked or delivered. In this way we can build up the data and trigger the ENS as early as possible so avoiding undue pressure on our documentation staff at the last moment.
The Bill of Landing information MUST be with us no later than the Closing date of the Vessel, for example if the closing is Wednesday, then we need to have all the information by the Wednesday morning, to ensure that we can list all of the cargo being presented.
We do not presently believe that the EU will look to block shipments, but we have little control over this. It does mean that we need to have all the required information to hand no later than the Closing day for the respective vessels. Any cargo that does not have by the deadline the required information will not be listed to load for the vessel.
We believe that many of our customers will not find this a problem as many already utilise various online booking platforms that allow for the easy presentation of the required information.
In order to acclimatise all customers to the new requirement, we are looking for those customers with bookings on the Gr.Tema v.0121, which is our last Tilbury sailing before the end of 2020, to present their Bill of Lading details now if the cargo is on quay or comply with the above request of providing the instructions on the day of delivery or next morning and no later than the morning of the closing for the vessels.
We will send notifications to those customers with cargo already on quay, but no Bill of Lading instructions presented.
