Chocolate and Chemicals?

As a follow-up to my post about the Chemical Industry User Group fall meeting in Newtown Square last week, I want to mention my almost favorite presentation of the meeting — the session on compliance with global trade regulations given by Erika Vidal Faulkenberry and Holly Stein of The Hershey Company. These two ladies did an excellent job of explaining why customs and trade compliance is both complex and necessary. Any industry that brings in imports raw materials and exports products can benefit from this company’s experience in developing and executing a global customs compliance program using SAP Global Trade Services to handle:

• Sanctioned Party List and Embargo Screening
• Import Licenses
• Classification for HTS Schedule B and FDA
• NAFTA Functionality – LTVD, Preference Determination, C-LTVD
• Import/Export Customs Declarations and Broker Audits

Perhaps one of their most useful tips was the way in which they created a Geographic Risk Matrix for the countries in which they did business that enabled them to prioritize roll out of the compliance program based on the volume, complexity, and value of their business in each country.

ASUG members will be able to get a copy of the presentation from the CISUG section of the ASUG web site.