A foreign trade company exported a batch of household plastic products to Zimbabwe. When the goods arrived at the port for customs clearance, local customs found that the product description on the COC certificate (Certificate of Conformity, a document certifying that products comply with Zimbabwean standards) did not match the actual goods, causing the cargo to be detained at the port.
The COC certificate is issued by an authorized body of the Zimbabwe Standards Association (SAZ), but the product name and model submitted during application were inconsistent with the actual product labels. Customs required correct documents to be resubmitted, otherwise clearance would be refused. The detained cargo incurred port demurrage fees and could potentially miss the sales season.
Reorganized product labels and photos to ensure consistency with the actual goods and submitted them to the authorized body for review. Simultaneously prepared a situation explanation letter and correction application to expedite the processing. Communicated with the Zimbabwean importer to assist in submitting supplementary documents to customs and applying for release.
The COC certificate correction was completed within 10 working days, and the goods were successfully cleared. Additional costs of approximately 5,000 yuan (reference range) were incurred, including certificate correction fees and demurrage fees. The seller subsequently strengthened document review to ensure consistency.
Before exporting to Zimbabwe, it is essential to verify the COC certificate against the actual product information to avoid low-level errors causing customs clearance delays. Cooperating with professional agents and conducting pre-review of documents in advance can effectively reduce risks.
On live projects the delay is rarely the testing itself; it is documents that do not line up before the sample ships.
Prepared by the Shuwang certification engineering team from live project records.
Service boundary: Shuwang Certification Platform is an export certification solution provider. It does not perform testing and is not a certification body. Testing described on this page is carried out by partner laboratories accredited to CNAS/CMA or ISO/IEC 17025; certificates are issued by EU Notified Bodies or by the authorised bodies of the destination country. Lead times and cost ranges are public industry references and depend on engineer assessment and body scheduling.