Get your freight forwarder in on the ground floor of your importing operations and you may be surprised at how much time and money you save, not to mention the number of headaches you can avoid.
Here are six things that we bet you didn’t know your international logistics provider could do for you:
1. Monitor Vendor Performance: Technology allows you to keep accurate, accessible tabs on your vendors and business partners. Using a dashboard application that tracks all imports and exports, orders, shipping times and other critical metrics, cutting-edge logistics providers like Transmodal Corporation provide next-generation visibility that puts all your shipment data in one place in a user-friendly interface. With this information, you’ll be able to benchmark vendor performance and make the best possible procurement decisions.
2. Import and Export Compliance: Over the last decade, literally every corner of the transportation industry has been impacted by increased regulation and oversight. Your freight forwarder works in the trenches day-in and day-out, and is well equipped to help you navigate the new laws, and ensure that your company and its shipments comply with all of the rules. Importers and exporters alike can tap into this valuable resource, and avoid the hefty penalties and fines associated with non-compliance. Export civil and criminal penalties are currently capped at $1 million (there are no caps on import penalties), but will increase to a maximum of $10 million (or 10 times the value of the export) when the new Export Administration Act is passed. Exporters like Silicon Graphics, Inc. (hit with $1.18 million in fines for illegally exporting high performance computers to a Russian nuclear laboratory) and Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corporation (smacked with a $210,00 civil penalty for a similar violation), learned the hard way. Keep your company’s nose clean by working with your freight forwarder to stay on the right side of the law.
3. Provide “Pay As You Go” Insurance: Maybe you don’t need an annualized insurance policy that covers the 20 percent of your business that ships globally, or maybe you only import goods during certain times of the year. Whatever the challenge, your international logistics provider can help by providing marine or air cargo insurance on a pay as you go basis. This can help fill the gaps left by another policy, or by your self-insurance strategy, and give you peace of mind with little extra effort. Your international logistics provider will also tell you what your policy does, and doesn’t, cover. Let’s say you just purchased $500,000 in consumer electronics with the intention of selling the goods for $2 million. Unfortunately, the computers were damaged during shipping and are unsalable, leaving your company out $1 million in lost profits (if your policy covered replacement costs). If you are insured for product replacement and associated fees, you will get $500,000, plus a $75,000 refund on duties paid and $50,000 for freight and warehousing expenses. That leaves you with $625,000, compared to $1.5 million if you had been able to sell the computers. Avoid this problem by knowing in advance what your insurance policy does and doesn’t cover, and by filling the gaps with a pay as you go policy from your international logistics provider.
4. Assist With Duty Refunds: When your shipment arrives in the U.S. soaking wet and damaged beyond repair, you not only lose the original product costs, sales value, export duties and freight fees, but you also lose the import duties that you paid out to get it into the country. Your freight forwarder can help with the latter by filing for a duty refund and helping you recover your costs. You’ll have to prove that the shipment is unsalvageable, and that you won’t be able to use it as intended, in order to get your money back. If your merchandise gets exported, companies like Transmodal Corporation can help you file for a duty drawback, which is the refund of customs duties and fees paid on imported merchandise that is either re-exported from the U.S. or destroyed by customs. Statistics show that several billion dollars of drawback claims go uncollected each year, even though claimants are entitled to a refund of 99 percent of the applicable duties, fees or taxes paid. Don’t leave this money on the table.
5. Tariff Engineering and Duty Minimization: Involve your customs broker in your shipping activities early and you’ll be able to tap its vast material classifications knowledge bank. These classifications dictate the amount of duties charged on shipments, and are often left hanging until after the shipment arrives in the U.S. By empowering your customs broker to assist with this aspect of your importing operations (by providing suggestions on the raw materials used in the products, for example) you may be able to significantly reduce your duties and increase your company’s bottom line. Your broker may be able to advise in other creative (and legal) ways of minimizing duty payments, such as the use of Free Trade Agreements, reporting of US Content, or the use of Foreign Trade Zones.
6. Ensure Social Responsibility Among Business Partners: Keeping tabs on issues like child labor, forced labor, health and safety, and discrimination isn’t easy from thousands of miles away. Many companies send their own teams to validate their overseas factories, and to make sure those companies are upholding the exporter’s own code of conduct. Handling this process internally is expensive and time consuming. Your international logistics provider can help by validating transparency, consistency and integrity across your operations and ensuring that none of your partners are violating your firm’s own commitment to social responsibility.