ONP load rejected for OCC content

By Ken McEntee

Amidst unsubstantiated rumors of major loads of scrap paper being turned away at Chinese ports, at least one rejection, characterized by China Inspection and Quarantine (CIQ) as “very serious,” was reported last month.

In January, strict government import standards banned China’s importation of mixed paper and other scrap commodities, as well as placing a 0.5% limit on contamination.

CCIC North America (China Certification and Inspection Group), a third-party inspection service that pre-inspects China-bound shipments, last month informed customers of the rejection at Ningbo, China.

“We are informed by Ningbo CIQ that a shipment from one of the self-inspection companies of CCIC North America Inc. was rejected due to the fact that more than 10% of OCC (old corrugated) was mixed with the ONP (old newspaper),” the notice said. “The nature of the issue was also characterized by CIQ as ‘very serious.'”

CCIC-NA advised customers to “Please pay special attention when shipping scrap paper of different grades, because any shipment of scrap paper consisting of mixed grades may cause issue at destination due to the fact that different CIQ may view the “unsorted paper” (HS Code: 4707900000), differently.”

Self inspection companies include large volume exporters who meet strict criteria, including ISO900o certification and a history of stable shipments that enables them to gain CCIC-NA certification to ship loads inspected by their own inspectors.

A source at CCIC-NA said today that he is not aware of any other rejections at Chinese ports. However, he said, that doesn’t mean that rejections haven’t happened. Typically, he said, a port would report a rejection into a centralized system.

“There is no guarantee that we would know everything,” he said. “If that port doesn’t upload a report of a rejection, then we will not be able to know.”

An exporter today said he has heard, but has not confirmed, that large loads of up to 200 containers had been rejected and were on their way back to both the East and West coasts of the U.S. The source at CCIC-NA said he was not aware of such a report.