Beverages & spirits

Before anything else we establish who owns the trade mark in the destination and whether the seller has the right to put the goods there. Genuine stock first placed on the market outside the EEA cannot be imported into the EU without the proprietor's consent, and removing or obscuring lot codes to hide the diversion gives the proprietor a legitimate reason to oppose the resale. We ask for the brand owner's authorisation in writing, or we treat the offer as a parallel line and price the risk openly.

A quoted price means nothing until you know whether it is ex-works under duty suspension, duty-paid in the country of dispatch, or already released for consumption. Duty-paid stock moving cross-border needs a certified consignor, a certified consignee and an e-SAD, plus a refund claim in the dispatch state that often never lands, so we buy in bond wherever the seller holds a tax warehouse authorisation. Where they do not, we bring in a warehousekeeper who does and structure the movement through them.

We build the destination label file before the order, not after the container arrives. For spirits that means the legal name and minimum strength under Regulation (EU) 2019/787, the actual alcoholic strength declared as "% vol" within the 0.3 tolerance, allergen declarations for sulphites over 10 mg/l and for milk in cream liqueurs, and a permitted nominal quantity. For the Gulf and the mainland it means an Arabic or Chinese back label agreed with the importer and the GACC registration number carried on both inner and outer packaging.

We take bottles from the intended production, not from the sales kit, and put them through a laboratory panel that matches the sub-category: methanol and higher alcohols for fruit spirits, ethyl carbamate for stone-fruit distillates, a microbiological and constituent panel for water including bromate where ozone-enriched air is used. Retention samples stay with us and with the supplier against the same batch codes. A certificate of analysis that does not name the batch is not a certificate of analysis.

Beverages weight out long before they cube out. A twenty-foot box of glass or water hits its payload with the container half empty, glass adds tare that earns nothing, and breakage on a badly patterned pallet is charged to whoever signed the delivery note. We fix the case count, pallet pattern and container type at quotation stage so the landed cost per litre is real.

We open the electronic administrative document, carry the ARC onto the export declaration so customs and excise reconcile, and chase the report of receipt or report of export until the movement closes. An undischarged movement leaves the guarantee engaged and the duty at risk against somebody's name, usually the consignor's. We treat closing the movement as part of the delivery, not as paperwork that follows it.

Where the destination requires fiscal marks — Serbia's control excise stamps carrying a QR code are the live example on our lanes — we enter the importer in the Customs Administration's register, request the stamps through the e-excise system, and get them applied at the bottling line or in a customs warehouse before release. Stamps are serialised and every one has to be accounted for, including the ones destroyed in application. We count them back and file the reconciliation.

We book a pre-shipment inspection against the specification and the approved artwork, photograph the loading and the container seal number, and put a temperature logger in the box on heat- or freeze-sensitive lines. The balance payment is released when the inspection passes, not when the booking is made. If the artwork on the line is not the approved version, the container does not load.

We assemble and keep the importer's file: the certificate of origin and preferential origin proof, the certificate of free sale and, on aged spirits, the certificate of age and origin, the batch certificates of analysis, the registration or licence numbers the destination requires, and the label approval. When an inspector opens the file at the border it is complete and the numbers on the documents match the numbers on the pallets.

For programmes with a seasonal peak we hold stock in a bonded or duty-suspended warehouse near the market and release for consumption only against confirmed orders, so the duty and the local tax fall due when the goods sell rather than when they land. Title and risk transfer are written into the arrangement rather than assumed. This is how a Q4 or a Lunar New Year programme is funded without paying tax on stock that is still on a rack.