There have been some fundamental shifts in supply chains and approaches to their management over recent years, prompting companies to re-evaluate their options for third-party logistics support. So, what are the key considerations when sourcing a partner to tackle changing circumstances?

Jamie Brown, Customs Manager at Priority Freight, explores why choosing the right partner for customs clearance is crucial for ensuring certainty of supply.

At Priority Freight, we have four fundamental USPs that govern our relationships with customers:

- Speed
- Reliability
- Security
- Control and visibility

 

We act quickly, at every given opportunity, to save our customers time and money and protect their reputation. As an end-to-end provider, we maximise efficiency at every stage, accumulating time savings throughout the movement and contributing to our 99.6% on-time delivery rate.

When looking at speed in specific relation to customs clearance, we have a number of provisions in place to keep the supply chain moving. Three years ago, in response to Brexit, we introduced a dedicated in-house customs team, employing and training customs specialists to support our clients 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Each enquiry receives a response within 15 minutes. This expert team’s sole focus is handling customs formalities, declarations and clearance on customers’ behalf.

Full AEO status allows us to streamline customs procedures and expedite the movement of goods into temporary storage between different member states. In addition, companies like ours that are part of the World Cargo Alliance (WCA) benefit from access to a network of over 7,000 member organisations in 189 countries around the world, enhancing our ability to provide round-the-clock services on a global scale.

In 2022, we also added a dedicated customs clearance office to our truck stop and warehouse facility near the Port of Dover. With Authorised Consignor and Authorised Consignee status, we can host a truck and driver at our site to process Customs Clearance Declarations and Transit documents, removing the need to report to the sometimes-congested Government-run inland border facilities. This means we control the release of our own documents for any transport that is either being moved by us and/or customs that are being cleared by us. If there are any delays to clearance, the goods can stay securely aboard the vehicle without needing to offload within a set period.

Whether Priority Freight is operating the entire movement from door-to-door, or just a part of it, we always ensure full control and visibility via our cloud-based TMS, which the customer can also access for an extra layer of insight. Customers are allocated a dedicated point of contact who speaks their language and will operate in their time zone day and night, giving a minimum of five milestone updates throughout the shipment.

Words mean nothing if the reality doesn’t live up to expectations, and we take great pride in the fact that 100% of customers in our latest survey were either ‘very satisfied’ or ‘satisfied’ with our service. When asked specifically about reliability, there were no negative responses.

Our AEO status is a mark of quality giving assurance that our customs control procedures meet strict international standards for security and reliability. Other measures of expertise and performance include meeting international standards through FIATA (International Federation of Freight Forwarders Association) and IATA (International Air Transport Association) memberships and holding the ISO 9001:2015 accreditation, which focuses on quality assurance.

How do our customers benefit from this?

Priority Freight took a two-phased approach; while its logistics team facilitated the collection of the shipment from two locations in the Czech Republic using a 4.2m curtain van, our dedicated in-house customs team began to manually process the unusually high volume of commercial invoices, consolidating them into one export document to expedite the customs clearance process.

Faced with such a brief, the process typically offered by other providers would have involved one person manually processing over 100 commercial invoices, likely taking more than three hours. Priority Freight’s method of enlisting a skilled processing team, working simultaneously to consolidate the documentation, took just 30 minutes and saved the client valuable hours at customs both out of the Czech Republic and into the UK.

The consignment was customs cleared en route to the UK utilising Priority Freight’s partner in France. Once the shipment arrived in the UK, the goods were already cleared for import, meaning the driver didn’t have to make a stop at the Government’s inland border facilities and could progress straight to delivery.

Priority Freight’s agile approach ensured the shipment could be delivered to the desired UK location within three days of instruction. The document consolidation process benefitted both the customer and the exporter in the Czech Republic, who can now continue shipping its product into the UK for sale.

With the right logistics partner providing speed, control and visibility, reliability and security, cross-border supply can be an easily navigated process. With an expert team solely focusing on customs clearance, no job is too big or small for Priority Freight.

To find out more visit: priorityfreight.com/customs