CUSTOMS CLERANCE DELAYS WERE SOLVED BY BETTER WORK DAY PLANNING
A professional forwarder knows how to handle logistics. A forwarder makes sure that things are done at the right time and there are no unnecessary delays. Customs clearance of cargo may, however, cause headaches for customers. Vessels may arrive at the same time and the cargoes of several customers arriving at the same time can cause congestion on the forwarders’ desks. Without customs clearance, cargoes are stuck at the port waiting.
At Cargo Handling Group, customs clearance delays were resolved by better work day planning and by making good preparation for customs clearance in advance. Each of our customers is also assigned a forwarder who is responsible for the customs clearance process from start to finish. Our forwarder Riikka Häyrynen talks about her own work in this blog. In Riikka’s opinion, the rapid pace of work and variable workdays are the best things about a freight forwarder’s job and make the job interesting. Riikka also tells how digitization has changed the forwarding industry and how IT-systems made forwarding work easier.
FORWARDER IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SMOOTH PROCESS IN CLEARANCE
Import clerance can sometimes cause bottlenecks and congestion in the logistics chain. If several vessels arrive at the port at the same time, the forwarders have a tough job in clearing the customs backlog. Cargo Handling Group took this as a challenge and thought about how we can speed up the customs clearance times of our own customers. We have put focus on planning the work and proceeding with clearance in at the right time. Our forwarder Riikka Häyrynen says that each Cargo Handling’s customer has their own designated forwarder who is responsible for the smooth process in customs clearance. Forwarder knows the client’s business well and keeps in touch with them. Forwarder completes clearance in advance of the ship’s arrival and obtains the necessary documents in time. When the ship arrives at the port, the only thing left for the forwarder to do is to send the pre-prepared customs declaration to the Customs system. If Customs does not ask for additional information related to customs clearance or wants to inspect the goods, the cargo can immediately continue its journey without unnecessary waiting.
CUSTOMS DECLARATIONS WERE STAMPED AT CUSTOMS
Riikka Häyrynen joined Cargo Handling Group as a forwarder 17 years ago. At first, Riikka took care of the book keeping of the customs warehouse in the Cargo Handling Group’s warehouse. At that time, almost all warehouses in South-Eastern Finland were handling nondeclared transit electronics goods, which were then loaded from the warehouses to Russia. Transit traffic in Finland was still managed with fairly simple software and a lot of manual work was done. Riikka still remembers well when the forwarders filled out dozens of Tir Carnet transit documents every day. Between the pages of the multi-page Tir Canet transit booklet, carbon papers were placed, which copied the text on the following pages, thus reducing manual writing work. Otherwise, customs declarations were printed on paper and stamped at Kouvola customs for a long time. Only T1 transits declarations started to be sent to Customs in EDI messages starting from 2003.
THE WORK OF FORWARDERS IS MULTIFACING
After the Transit-boom in Finland, Riikka Häyrynen’s work at Cargo Handling Group became more multifacing and diverse electronic systems developed at a rapid pace. With the start of warehouse logistics and paper and cardboard handling, Cargo Handling began to do more export customs clearance, and as the volumes increased, EDI message traffic with the customer also started.
Rail traffic to Russia and imports from Russia increased in the 2010s, and with that, the number of export and import customs clearance also increased. At that time, all customs declarations were already made electronically. Riikka Häyrynen feels that in the early days of her career, as a transit forwarder, her work at Cargo Handling was very one-sided compared to today, even though the handling volumes were huge then. Now Riikka’s duties include versatile export and import customs clearance as well as arrangements for transportation, loading and unloading.
WORK ORGANIZATION HELPS IN A RUSH
It is typical that the workload of a forwarder is not evenly distributed every day or every hour of the day. Sometimes there are obvious rush peaks. If there is a lot of work at once, it is sometimes stressful. However, organizing the work helps to tackle the problem. Riikka Häyrynen has been working as a freight forwarder for so long that organizing work is easy for her. She knows how to prioritize the most pressing tasks and evaluate her own time use well. “You can always take care of a small issue right away and then continue working on the more demanding and time-consuming project,” says Riikka.
INTERACTION WORKS BETWEEN THE FORWARDERS AND THE WAREHOUSE
Riikka wants to highlight the good team spirit of Cargo Handling Group’s forwarders and warehouse staff. The cooperation between the forwarders and the warehouse works well. “Work and schedules are planned together and communication is uncomplicated. We help each other and solve problems together”, Riikka praises and notes that a good team spirit is also visible to customers as good customer service.
DIGITALIZATION THE BIGGEST CHANGE IN THE FORWARDING INDUSTRY
Riikka Häyrynen says that digitalization has been the biggest change in the forwarding industry during her career. At the beginning of the 2000s, Finnish Customs started building new customs clearance systems and EDI-testing started. Exports, imports and transits gradually became electronic. Before that, forwarders went to Customs to stamp paper forms.
“Electronic systems have greatly facilitated practical work,” says Riikka. The systems have also enabled e.g. customs clearance at any border location remotely. We can do clearance to any border from our office in Kouvola. In Riikka’s opinion, staying involved in system development is both challenging and interesting in her work. The systems become smarter all the time and they are more and more used friendly. It would be impossible to imagine a return to the world of paper forms and stamps.
Communication with customers has also changed. Even 10 years ago, the phones were ringing in the forwarder’s office all the time. Now issues that are not exactly urgent are handled by e-mail or via messaging apps. “The message reaches the customer when he has a suitable time to focus on the matter. The threshold for calling has become higher and it is more difficult to reach people by phone these days,” says Riikka. However, even today, urgent matters are handled over the phone, so that problems are solved quickly.
Riikka Häyrynen, forwarder
- Started as a forwarder in 2007
- Forwarder e.g. organizes transports, does customs clearance, prepares transport documents
- What is good at work: Cargo Handling’s great team and team spirit, every day is different –
- A funny memory from work: A Turkish driver spent the night at Cargo Handling’s parkig area in Kouvola. A trangia kettle had been stolen from him during the night. The driver was really angry and suspected the theft of other drivers. The driver wanted to call the police to the scene to investigate the matter. The police did not come, but we got Turkish language interpretation help from the pizzeria owner from Kouvola. The driver was able to watch the surveillance camera recordings at the office. Over a cup of coffee, the biggest anger disappeared. Unfortunately, Trangia’s theft was not solved.
