MHD SUPPLY CHAIN
CUSTOMS INTELLIGENCE MAKING ALL THE DIFFERENCE MHD talks to Andrew Coldrey, Vice President Oceania for C.H. Robinson, about how Australian businesses can save thousands every year on import duty.
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ccording to a report prepared for the Australian Department of Human Affairs and Trade, the average tariff rate applied in Australia has fallen from more than 7 per cent to less than 1 per cent over the past 30 years. Andrew Coldrey, Vice President Oceania for C.H. Robinson says complacency over such reductions can be the Achilles’ heel of importers who overspend on import duty. “The import rates are less of an issue, but they still exist and can remain a big cost for businesses,” Andrew says. To challenge this unnecessary expense, C.H. Robinson spent around 18 months developing a Customs Intelligence (CI) program here in Australia to zero in on where clients are paying too much duty so they can claim back the excess. Launched this year, C.H. Robinson’s CI program partners its customs expertise and tech power to automate the process in a way that’s easy to identify clear opportunities to cut down on import costs and mitigate threats of non-compliance. “We saw the opportunity to develop our own proprietary tech to enable our incredibly valuable customs experts to better leverage large amounts of data in order to identify cost-saving opportunities,” Andrew says. “This year we’ve had clients be refunded over a million dollars. It’s possible to go back four years to get duty refunds, which can result in real windfalls.” The process starts with a letter of authority from a client or prospective client authorising C.H. Robinson to
obtain records of import duty paid from Australian Border Force (ABF). The CI allows C.H. Robinson’s customs experts to analyse the ABF data to identify opportunities to assess and recover excess duty paid by importers. Andrew says this could be because of wrong assessments or through lacking a deep knowledge of free trade agreements and the various factors affecting import duty. Basically, the program identifies opportunities within data that clients already have or data they have available to them, simply by accessing their ABF records.
“It enables us to aggregate opportunities,” Andrew adds. “There might be an added duty amount on a given import line, for example $100 might not seem like a lot but it becomes significant when it’s applied to say 5000 importations.” The program also allows C.H. Robinson’s consultants to compare free trade agreements to get the maximum benefit from the various agreements in place today. “No-one wants to pay more taxes or duty than they need to,” he says. “By laying out the information CI can glean from ABF records in a simple
CI identifies opportunities within data that clients already have.
MHD OCTOBER 2021 | 29
