GACC Registration for Exporting Food to China
An important development has become part of the international trade landscape: the GACC registration for exporting food to China.
Regulation 248 has introduced the obligation of registration on the GACC portal (General Administration of Customs People’s Republic of China), namely the Chinese customs. The registration covers production sites and foreign products being introduced into the country.
Which products must be registered at the GACC?
Any food product exported to China must be registered on the GACC portal:
- Meat and meat-based products, aquaculture products, milk and its derivatives, dairy products, and swallow nests. These products were already required to be registered on the GACC previously, so nothing has changed. These must be pre-approved by the local competent authority.
- Honey, beekeeping products, eggs, edible fats and oils, filled pasta, edible cereals, milling industry and malt products, fresh and dehydrated vegetables, dried legumes, condiments, nuts and seeds, dried fruits, unroasted coffee beans, and cocoa beans. These products do not need to register independently on the portal but will be recommended to the GACC directly by the competent authority of the country of production.
- All other food products, considered to be low risk, will need to be registered on the GACC portal independently by the producer.
Pure exporters, on the other hand, do not need to register on this portal; they must register on a different dedicated portal.
What datas are required?
The GACC registration for exporting food to China requires basic company information such as VAT number, legal representative, company name, address, and contact person.
I prodotti da registrare andranno inseriti singolarmente con la categoria del prodotto, codice HS o CIQ, marca del prodotto, capacità produttiva o di stoccaggio annuale. I dati da inserire variano a seconda che si tratti di un sito produttivo o di processamento del prodotto e dall’HS del prodotto.
Subsequently, the portal requires information regarding production: ingredients, use of own or public water, and a Chamber of Commerce extract in English. In the attachments, it will be necessary to upload documents marked as 'must pass,' which vary depending on the product.
Which difficulties for the registration?
Some steps in the registration process on the GACC portal are Mandarin Chinese and cannot be translated into any other language. On the portal, every single product that is produced and intended for export to China must be registered.
The release of the code does not occur immediately after entering the data on the portal. As long as the products do not display the registration code on both the internal and external packaging, with consequent storage costs. It is important to underline that the company must possess the code BEFORE the goods arrive at Chinese customs
The registration code may not necessarily be directly printed on the label or outer carton but can also be affixed with a sticker on both packaging types, and it will be valid for 5 years.
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