IOR / Freight Forwarder

Hello, I'd like to ask for your advice on something. Here's a potential scenario: There's a shipment of Dangerous Good heading from Canada to Zambia. The freight forwarder in Canada and freight forwarder in the UK have agreed that the shipment will be sent to the UK by fast parcel courier. Can UK freight forwarder act as the IOR since they are not a part of the contract of sale, and once it entered the free circulation, re-export the shipment to Zambia? Thank you, K

Why would the goods need to come via the uk and enter in free circulation here? Although it’s not a requirement to own goods being imported it is unlikely that a freight forwarder or courier would want to take the risk of being the importer and suffer import duties an unrecoverable import vat . Only an owner can recover import VAT.

Hi @customs old-timer, Thanks for getting back to me on this. Basically, the routing options are very limited, so my colleague from our JFK office has come up with a "brilliant" idea of sending it over via FedEx Express and clearing it here under our EORI number as Home Use and then re-export it. I'm trying to explain to her that our role in supply chain (freight forwarder) is not being IOR as we don't own the goods , plus we shouldn't take unnecessary risk of handling heavy regulated shipment this way. I just wanted pro's opinion on this , just make sure that I'm not the one in wrong here...

If it’s just a matter of available routing surely the goods do not need to be customs cleared in the UK at all but treated as a airside or cross dock operation ( assuming the dangerous goods /H&S requirements are complied with)

Hi,

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Thank you

Thank you both - The idea is for this to arrive via Fedex , so cross dock would not be an option I think. I spoke with a customs Agent about it, and they said that even if this arrived as airfreight they would not be able to arrange a transhipmnet as due to the nature of goods (Class 7 ) the 10% inspection would not be possibe...