South Africa is one of the largest suppliers of wine to the United Kingdom, and the lane runs in two distinct forms: cased goods bottled at the cellar, and bulk wine shipped in flexitanks for filling in Great Britain. Both are imports. Both need a customs declaration. But the tax profile of this commodity is […]
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Olive oil looks like one of the simplest things a UK business can import from Italy. It is shelf-stable, it needs no veterinary certificate, it carries no tariff when it genuinely originates in the EU, and it attracts no import VAT when it is sold as food. That surface simplicity is exactly why consignments get […]
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On 26 August 2026, Eurostat published its second-quarter 2026 figures for international trade in goods. The headline on the release is about the United States and China. Underneath it sits a quieter number that matters far more directly to anyone filing declarations across the Channel: UK–EU goods trade grew on both sides of the ledger […]
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On 27 August 2026, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union published version 7.0.11 of the EU Customs Data Model, EUCDM for short, the reference standard that defines exactly how customs data must be structured, coded and exchanged across every EU trans-European customs system. It is not the kind of release that makes […]
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On 1 September 2026, HMRC published an update confirming what many hauliers and transit operators had been expecting since the summer: the Sevington and Holyhead inland border facilities are being wound down as customs sites, with their functions transferring to infrastructure run by port operators from early 2027. The detail that matters most for anyone […]
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For most of the past decade, artificial intelligence in customs lived mostly in pilot programmes, conference panels and vendor roadmaps. That changed quickly through 2025 and 2026. The World Customs Organization has spent the past eighteen months publishing formal governance frameworks for AI and machine learning adoption across its membership. National administrations from India to […]
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HMRC’s Transformation Roadmap was first published in July 2025, setting out a five-year vision for a more efficient, modernised and automated tax and customs system. The progress update that followed — first published on 2 July 2026 and most recently updated on 27 July 2026 — reports on the first year of delivery against that […]
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On 13 August 2026, the Office for National Statistics published its June 2026 UK trade bulletin, and the headline monthly numbers are stark. Goods exports fell by £2.2 billion — a 6.3% drop — in a single month. The fall was not evenly spread: exports to the EU dropped by £1.3 billion, down 7.4%, while […]
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