In February GS1 together with the Australian Customs Service and HM Revenue and Customs of United Kingdom reported on the interim results of the pilot project using SSCC as Unique Consignment Reference (UCR).  This communication was made at the at the World Customs Organisation (WCO) Information Management Sub-Committee Meeting (IMSC). 

 

The project was initiated to demonstrate the use of SSCC as UCR in line with the WCO UCR recommendation. It aims to promote safe and secure borders and to provide Customs Authorities with information related to the flow of goods in the international supply chain. The project focus is to demonstrate the benefits of extending the use of SSCC to cross-border transactions with minimum impact on trade, and by providing customs with information at the earliest time in supply chain and also to allow improved post transaction audit and cargo reconciliation by Customs.

 

The project will run until June ’07 with GS1 providing a project management role. Constellation and Diageo use SSCC in their international transactions between the UK and Australia in commercial ordering and shipping documentation and the legally mandated declarations to the relevant Customs authorities.

 

In the interim report, the participating trading partners confirmed that the SSCC:

 

is already an established and well utilized tool within internal operations. The extension of its use to the customs area proves more sensible and is easier than the creation and management of a new numbering sequence.

provides adequate level of uniqueness for identification of shipments and at this early stage, appears to support certain critical requirements for the customs risk management and audit processes.

provides the potential for access to comprehensive and timely information for the Customs authorities, by linking commercial and customs information

 

HM Revenue and Customs audit officer observed in his report: “With the way the stock control system has been set up at Constellation Europe, the adoption of SSCC as the UCR would provide a unique identification code for audit, consignment tracking, and verification and reconciliation purposes”.

 

Both trade and customs perceive the main advantage of SSCC to be that of as an electronic staple, with all involved parties in the supply chain talking about the same reference number.

 

The Secretary-General of the WCO, Mr Michel Danet has said that this project demonstrates an excellent example of Customs and the international trading industry working in collaboration to illustrate the merits of a key WCO instrument.