Alerts
Permit assessment delay for food commodities
Effective from 17 December 2019Dear importers and other stakeholders,
In recent months, the department has taken longer to process some import permit applications because technical teams have experienced significant competing priorities.
Permit assessments also take longer if all relevant information is not supplied with the application.
To help avoid unnecessary delays, we ask that permit applicants:
Provide all relevant information, including a questionnaire (available from the BICON commodity case), completed by your manufacturer.
Submit permit applications at least three months before you expect to ship your goods.
If you already have a permit, and you don’t want your old and new permits to overlap, we can forward-date your new permit by up to three months from the date of application. Let us know if you would like this to happen.Ensure information supplied in support of the permit application meets the department’s 'Minimum documentary and import declaration requirements policy'.
If you have any questions or wish to discuss the matter please email imports@agriculture.gov.au or call 1800 900 090 (prompt 1, prompt 1).
This Alert applies to the following Cases:
- Cooked items (biscuits, breads, pastries, cakes), uncooked cheesecakes and cooked mooncakes
- Noodles for human consumption
- Enzymes
- Animal based flavours or floss
- Microalgae
- Egg and egg products for human consumption
- Meals ready to eat (MREs) for human consumption
- Bee products
- Returning Australian products
- Food samples
- Starter cultures (and derivatives)
- Ship or aircraft stores for transhipment
- Unretorted meat
- Feathers
- Goods made with rawhide
- Natural fibres (and their derivatives) of animal origin
- Insects and insect products for human consumption
- Animal trophies, articles and handicraft items
- Pearls and oysters containing pearls
- Dairy
- Pig meat
- Coffee for processing or human consumption
- Cosmetics and soaps