DIGITALLY delivered Preferential Certificates of Origin for Australia and New Zealand, which will make it faster and easier for exports to claim Free Trade Agreement benefits, have been approved for WiseTech Global.
The accreditation uses a digitally enabled process that reduces the time to obtain a certificate to just minutes, something WiseTech says is essential for perishable cargo or to avoid fines for late departures.
The 24/7 digital processing and validation increases the speed, ease and efficiency of obtaining a COO.
A Certificate of Origin is an official document used in international trade that states the country where a product was grown, produced or manufactured and is required to facilitate customs clearance in the destination country.
Preferential COOs are used as part of a preferential agreement (such as a free trade agreement) where the exporter wants to claim a benefit, such as reduced tariffs, applied by the importing country. Hundreds of thousand Preferential COOs are generated annually for Australian goods.
WiseTech’s solution will generate both Preferential and Non-Preferential COOs for Australia. As the solution is integrated with WiseTech’s logistics execution platform, CargoWise, it automatically validates data in the exporter’s COO application against the associated shipment data in CargoWise, including shipper, shipment and consignee information.
It also verifies that the right free trade agreement and relevant Harmonized System (HS) code is applied. In addition, subsequent repeat COO applications containing the same approved details are immediately validated. This level of digitization, integration and smart validation which WiseTech says enables COOs to be delivered in minutes, with less rejections, compared to other services which can take hours or even days.
WiseTech Global digital documents portfolio leader, Michael Kheirabi said that given Australia has 18 agreements, with more than 20 countries, and is seeking to negotiate and implement more, the demand for Preferential Certificates of Origin to take advantage of these free trade agreements is already high and likely to increase.
“As part of the operating system for global trade and logistics, CargoWise’s customs and compliance suite already helps freight forwarders manage their customs obligations,” Mr Kheirabi said.
“This puts us in a unique position to digitally connect different parts of international trade – including exporters, freight forwarders and regulatory bodies – to enable greater automation, reduce manual intervention and provide 24/7 accessibility.”
WiseTech has been certified to issue Preferential COOs for New Zealand since December 2024 and the New Zealand Customs Service recently contracted WiseTech to digitise its tariff system.
“The Australian and New Zealand governments are very progressive in the way that they have engaged industry partners like WiseTech to drive better and deeper digitalization of customs documentation and processes,” Mr Kheirabi said.
“Certificates of Origin are often issued by Chambers of Commerce and while they offer online applications, they don’t have the ability to automatically access and validate data in the context of executing the movement of goods the way our solution does.”