EU Customs Advanced Manifest Rule – Transport Document Instructions and Mandatory requirements
With regard to the EU Customs Advanced Manifest Rule, we would like to emphasise the importance of submitting the Transport Document Instructions (TDIs) in accordance with the deadlines set by your local Maersk Line office. The TDIs provide us with the information we need to submit to the EU Member States’ customs offices by the deadlines they have given us. Failure to submit the shipping instructions on time may delay submission of the cargo manifest, which could prevent your cargo from being loaded for deep-sea shipments, and could result in fines and/or penalties imposed by customs at short-sea shipment destination.
In addition, please make sure that your TDI is filled out completely and accurately, in accordance with EU customs regulation requirements. More information can be found in our Quick Reference Guide.
We recommend that you review the details below regarding information required by EU customs:
1. HS codes (Harmonized System Code) EU regulations require you to provide either a HS4/HS6 code or a commodity description. We kindly ask you to provide us with the HS4/HS6 codes only, meaning codes of more than six (6) characters long.
2. Number of packages vs. piece count EU regulations require you to specify the type and number of packages, not individual item counts. This means that customs may reject quantities such as "200,000 hats", as this represents the piece count and not the number of packages loaded. The correct format is "200 boxes containing hats" (i.e., the outer packaging).
We urge you to provide us with the number of packages as above to avoid problems with customs.
3. Shipper/consignee’s information EU regulations require "complete" information about the parties involved (notify party must be available when consignee is "to order"). Although it is not very clear at this point what "complete" entails, we encourage you to provide us with as much information as possible (i.e., company name, complete address and telephone).
Relevant links Please refer to the below links for further details on the EU advanced manifest rule:
