Notice For The Importation From Italy

I have ever many times importing yarns for knitting from Italy. This is we do according to buyer request for their order that were putted to our factory.  I thought our buyer from Japan like a luxury yarn with having a high price. The sweater usually has a hang tag that shows the composition and the yarn’s manufacturer.
 

We are not directly order the yarn to yarn’s factory in Italy, but buyer order the yarn to their agent in Japan, then the agent will order to Italy . I thought they have inserted the commission to the yarns price.
 

The yarn’s company we’ll send us the proforma invoice as their confirmation after we sent our purchase order (PO) to them. This proforma invoice isn’t the final quantity we will receive.
 

After the goods are being ready, they issue the packing list and invoice to be forwarded to us for our checking and payment settlement.
 

One thing made us surprise is the condition weight. The condition weight is around five percent from the net weight. So, we have to pay the additional weight for nothing. For example, the quantity or net weight on invoice is 2000 kilograms, but we have to pay 2050 kilograms. The 50 kilograms is the condition weight which we will never receive the goods.
 

Another thing that made us surprise is the term of shipment. For by sea shipment we usually prefer to take the FOB as the shipment term due to the local charges will be cheaper then CIF term. FOB is mean importer or buyer pay all transport charges starting from origin’s port. For example, if we agree the price is in FOB Genoa, the freight charges and the destination local charges will go to us. But, in fact, the last result is all charges starting from the factory will be going to importer.  In this case we may call the FOB Italy is the Ex-work.
 

The difficulty for asking them to provide the complete customs document is also happened. This is my experience, I have reminded them many times to provide all documents for the customs process, but, when the package comes, I found one of documents required is missing. Or sometimes we asking forwarder to send us the Bill of Lading, because shipper didn’t, then they only send another one. Of course, the courier fees for sending original Bill of Lading will be born to us.
 

The yarn’s supplier is also doesn’t cooperate concerning the type of move, I mean whether the shipment is using FCL or LCL. If you work in export and import world, you will learn what the volume is has to be FCL or LCL. I have twice reminded them for the cargo which having the volume or the CBM more than nine or ten, it should be arranged by FCL, otherwise we have to pay extra cost or high cost for the local charges at destination. But in fact, even we have the goods with the CBM around thirty eight, they do the shipment by LCL, then as the result we have to provide the additional cost for the local charges at destination.    
 

As the conclusion, we have to give extra effort when we order any goods from Italy. All things we need should be informed far away from the shipment and we have to remind them many times till we get what we want from them.

Case "TO ORDER OF SHIPPER" and "TO ORDER OF APPLICANT"

I have arranged the shipment to Japan for one of our buyer. We and the buyer agreed to use L/C for the order or trading. Before buyer instructs their bank to issue the L/C, they forwarded me the L/C draft for my checking.

During my reading and checking to the L/C draft, I found buyer wanted “TO ORDER OF SHIPPER “to be filled in the consignee’s column. This is making me to think two meanings when I instruct forwarder to arrange the B/L. The first meaning is "TO ORDER OF SHIPPER" wrote in consignee’s column. And the second meaning is TO ORDER OF our company name.

  

Finally, I decided the first choice or "TO ORDER OF SHIPPER" to be filled in the consignee's column on Bill of Lading. When I submitted all documents required to bank, Bank didn't found any discrepancy in Bill of Lading that I submitted to the bank.

To "TO ORDER OF APPLICANT" is something new for me and it’s seldom stated on an L/C. But, this was happened in our trade.

A buyer from Japan has changed their shipment manual concerning the consignee in Bill of Lading. They changed from "TO ORDER OF SHIPPER" becoming "TO ORDER OF APPLICANT". For our bank it’s something new, too.

I have followed the L/C, and I decided to fill in the consignee with "TO ORDER OF APPLICANT". Before the Bill of lading printed out, I have sent it to buyer to get their approval for the Bill of Lading content. Then buyer confirmed to the Bill of Lading.

After I collected and created all documents required as stated on L/C, I submitted the documents to our bank. Unfortunately, our bank found a discrepancy in Bill of Lading, specifically in consignee's column. The consignee should be TO ORDER OF “Applicant Name”. For example, let say the applicant name is ABC, then the consignee on Bill of Lading should be written with "TO ORDER OF ABC". This is because if we write the "TO ORDER OF APPLICANT", people who receive the Bill of lading will never know who is the consignee? So that the consignee name in details must be written on Bill of Lading.

Because of that, we got the discrepancy charges that will be deducted from the payment, and we have to persuade buyer to accept the discrepancy and release the payment when the documents arrived at their bank. 

Notice of Arrival ( NOA )

When the goods close to arrival at destination the notice of arrival or NOA will be performed by forwarding agent to be forwarded to importer. This notice of arrival containing the details of shipment and importer has to check strictly the contents till importer feels in no doubt.

The valid data on NOA is a must to ensure the customs clearance to be going easy and smoothly. For especially in description of goods and the consignee and shipper name. Better importer making the description of goods with the same description on all shipping documents, for instance, importer has a description " Yarns, 100 % Linen ", then shipper should mentions it on the invoice, packing list, bill of lading or house air waybill, and others documents are requested. This way to do is protecting to any possibility customs problems coming up. Not only the description of goods in uniform, the other data shown on documents should be uniformed, too.

Forwarding agent will follow the NOA to submit the data manifest to customs. It's mean that if the data in NOA is wrong this will leads to customs problem due to there are discrepancies between the goods and the data manifest.

We have ever got a problems concerning the difference data of consignee name. Forwarding agent did not sent us the NOA or the draft of data, we did not check the data manifest prior to submitted. Unfortunately, between data manifest and data on bill of lading is not uniform.The difference is only one letter. On the bill of lading wrote "GARMEN", contrary manifest showed "GARMENT". This difference is only on "T" letter, then this leaded to the customs process longer than common done. This took one week additional times for clearance and of course, this leaded to the additional warehouse fee or charges and such additional handling fee came to our account. So that the correction before the data submitted to the system is a must to do to avoid the additional times and charges happened.

Additionally, at the same time our production having very short time to the delivery date. Because the row material  came late, we should took overtime to finish the goods in time or to reach the delivery date buyer decided. Then the result is a higher production cost came up. Moreover, we had to air parts quantity left because this parts was not finish and can be delivered in time then buyer had decided the part of quantity left to be going aired. Unfortunately, the cost of air freight was came to our account or the term shipment was on prepaid.

This case gives us experience that we should extra strictly to follow up our importation and proactively keep in touch with forwarding agent and we have to get all the drafts of shipping documents before all the documents are issued up and prior to the shipper  ship out the goods.