Sharing of the Case of Frozen Fish Import

A domestic major food manufacturer wanted to import a variety of frozen fishes from the Surinam region of South America. Through selection among several trade supply chain suppliers, they finally decided to join hands with ADP.

The biggest difference in import between frozen aquatic products and common pre-packed foods is that: for the former, their product names, scientific names, production factory No. and original country. Incompliance by any of the said items may lead to failure of the import.

In our first cooperation, as the client didn’t know about this rule, he failed to check such information of the products before the shipment. According to the materials they offered us, we found a fish variety was not on the list of import permission, which may cause retention of goods upon their arrival at the port or even destruction and return. Upon learning about this, we immediately went to the Inspection and Quarantine Bureau to explain the situation, and contacted the local Commercial Department of Surinam for negotiation and offered explanations. Eventually, due to our communication at home and abroad, we helped the client retain the goods for self use, avoiding causing more losses.

After the first cooperation, the client gave full affirmation to our capacity and speed in coping with the business and emergency. To ensure goods could be successfully cleared upon arrival at the port, we worked out the following procedure for our clients:

1，Offer the product name, Latino scientific name, product status, original country, factory No., caught/raised of the products to be imported;

2，Upon confirmation of the import permission and before the overseas shipment, you need to confirm if the Chinese/English labels of the products conform to the requirements and then notify the foreign party of the packaging;

3，Upon shipment of the goods, you need to confirm all materials required for the import: Certificate of Place of Origin, sanitary certificate, inspection and quarantine certificate for import to China, invoice and packing list. When finding there’s anything wrong with the material, you need to ask the foreign party to modify in time. Modifying documents upon arrival at the port shall be avoided, because it may affect the timeliness.

4，Upon goods’ arrival at the port, if there’s nothing wrong with the material, the goods will be delivered to the client’s warehouse within 4 working days.

Upon confirmation of this procedure, as limited by the language and time lag, a few severe faults occurred upon arrival of the clients’ carriers. We also proposed and implemented solutions, including treatment of the documents, negotiation of Customs commercial inspection on site, and afterward follow-up), to finally give the client a satisfactory result.

Since the price of aquatic products showed terrific fluctuation, our preview could help our clients clearly understand the products and countries available for import, and select products of the best quality and lowest price for import, thus allowing our clients to control the cost and formulate the target price to maximize its profit.