Global Trade

PwC Australia’s Global Trade practice brings together subject matter experts across customs compliance, trade facilitation and supply chain strategy, technology and innovation.

Solving important problems in your international supply chain

The challenges for business in effectively managing international trade have never been greater. The volume of trade laws and regulations, together with the complexity of modern supply chains, means that businesses must find effective and accurate ways to meet their trade compliance obligations whilst remaining competitive.

PwC Australia’s leading Global Trade practice combines a wealth of specialist knowledge and industry experience to support your international supply chain strategy and trade compliance needs. From optimising your global trade position to implementing trade automation and technology, we can assist you in every step of your international trade journey.

Our approach of understanding your business needs and focussing on quality means that we bring value in everything that we do. We provide the global trade expertise so you can stay ahead.

Services and solutions

Customs consulting services

Our Global Trade specialists can assist you with navigating the rules and regulations at the border, whilst developing and implementing strategies to optimise your duty position. We can assist you with:

  • Tailored advice to solve problems and pursue opportunities across your international supply chain. This includes providing advice on duties and border taxes, regulatory barriers to trade,  advanced rulings from customs or tax authorities, voluntary disclosures for historical errors, (amongst others). Our tailored approach ensures that you benefit from quality solutions that are fit-for-purpose.
  • Duty optimisation through working with you to identify and realise retrospective duty refunds and prospective duty savings through the use of tariff concessions, Free Trade Agreements and duty drawback mechanisms.
  • Accurate tariff classification for your goods in order to mitigate any risk of penalties and enable the use of duty optimisation mechanisms (above).
  • Customs valuation and transfer pricing adjustments, given customs valuation is a key compliance focus for the Australian Border Force. We can provide specialist advice on customs valuation advice, including making requests for a valuation advice ruling from the Australian Border Force and lodgement of voluntary disclosures to correct any historical errors.
  • Permits and licensing to ensure you can legally import any restricted or controlled goods into Australia and mitigate border delays.
  • At border trademark protection measures to provide transparency of and protection against the parallel or counterfeit goods.
Trade technology and automation solutions

Given the increasing volume and speed of trade, it is critical for businesses to adopt technology and automation to streamline and digitise their trade operations to maintain a competitive advantage. We can assist you with:

  • Trade compliance management systems to automate restricted party screening, permit requirements, tariff classification, concessional tariff use, creation and filing of customs declarations and record keeping.
  • Trade preference management to digitise and optimise Free Trade Agreement eligibility assessments for importations and integrate with product bill of materials.
  • Bond management systems to track and report movements in and out of bonded warehouses.
  • Tailored solutions to meet specific business needs, such as automating specific international trade processes,compliance requirements or using dashboard technology and AI to generate greater visibility and insights.
Trade and international supply chain operations

To ensure that goods move efficiently and securely through international supply chains, we can assist with:

  • Review of international trade activities to identify inefficiencies or compliance risks in global procurement; optimal freight mode utilisation, trade route selection, management of 3PLs and assess regulatory compliance across the international supply chain.
  • Cost-analysis across international supply chains to identify, review and reduce costs embedded in global supply chains, including transport and insurance costs, reporting and regulatory compliance charges; freight forwarding and brokerage costs and local storage and distribution costs.
  • Development of risk mitigation strategies within global supply chains, leveraging Trade technology and automation solutions (above) that generate greater visibility of supply chain operations, risks and opportunities.
  • Advice on trade facilitation schemes (such as the Australian Trusted Trader Program and other Authorised Economic Operator schemes), including assistance with benefits analysis, scheme applications and ongoing compliance to mitigate friction at the border and reduce costs.
  • Support to uplift supply chain capabilities and cargo security, such as review of global supply chain risk profiles, developing and implementing international supply chain security risk management frameworks and procedures and application for the Known Consignor scheme.
Cross border biosecurity and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues

We can assist you with taking a proactive approach to biosecurity and ESG matters and staying ahead of any updates and changes, including:

  • Advice on biosecurity matters to ensure compliance with any biosecurity laws e.g. permits or any other BICON requirements and illegal logging.
  • Seeking streamlined regulatory biosecurity arrangements with the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) (e.g. Approved Arrangements and Food Import Compliance Agreements).
  • Environmental taxes and regimes at the border to ensure you have processes in place to navigate any potential new rules, such as a Border Carbon Adjustment (BCA) mechanism, battery stewardship scheme or plastic packaging taxes.
  • Trade compliance governance framework to assist you with the implementation and execution of an end-to-end trade governance and compliance framework to enable centralised oversight and strategic planning.
Export controls and sanctions

Where goods are subject to export controls or sanctions, it is critical for businesses to obtain any relevant permits and maintain robust governance structures to ensure compliance with the required controls. We can assist with:

  • Permit assessment to determine whether goods are restricted or controlled and permit requirements exist.
  • Sanctions permit and export permit applications to ensure you can legally import or export the relevant goods into or out of Australia and mitigate border delays.
  • Governance framework development (e.g. Export Control Compliance Program) to ensure that relevant processes, systems, documentation and an overarching governance framework exists to support compliance with sanctions and export control laws.

Explore PwC’s Trade Analytics Platform (TAP) – see how we can bring your global trade activities to life and generate rapid and actionable insights relevant to your operations.

Our cloud-based data visualisation platform aggregates and connects existing data from trade regulators and other readily available data sources (both internal and external) to support:

  • Tax/duty optimisation through an assessment and quantification of tariff exposure, import charges and potential duty savings.
  • Maximising delivery performance through highlighting country sourcing profiles and opportunities for freight capacity planning and network optimisation.
  • Assessment of supply chain costs through analysis of landed cost, freight and inventory/working capital management.
  • Global supply chain risk management by flagging goods or activities with 'high exposure' in cross-border regulatory compliance.
  • Improving governance by providing oversight of carrier and broker performance and ensuring network transparency for ethical/CSR reporting.
  • Customised analytics and insights to support your ongoing decision making.

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Contact us

Gary Dutton

Gary Dutton

Partner, National Global Trade Leader, Brisbane, PwC Australia

Tel: +61 434 182 652

Paul Cornick

Paul Cornick

Partner, Global Trade, Sydney, PwC Australia

Tel: +61 439 733 981

Frances Ryan

Frances Ryan

Director, Global Trade, Sydney, PwC Australia

Tel: +61 412 062 334 

Sarah Macchiavelli

Sarah Macchiavelli

Director, Global Trade, Sydney, PwC Australia

Tel: +61 408 368 322 

Melissa Camilleri

Melissa Camilleri

Director, Global Trade, Melbourne, PwC Australia

Tel: +61 412 196 533

Lara Jobling

Lara Jobling

Director, Global Trade, Melbourne, PwC Australia

Tel: +61 488 552 927  

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