NBTC vs TISI: Which Thai Approval Your IT Equipment Actually Needs
A rack-mounted server with no wireless may need one Thai product approval. Add a wireless management module and the regulatory route can change entirely. Ship equipment that will later be re-exported and a separate trade-control question can arise. The hardware barely changes. The path to market does. The NBTC vs TISI question gets asked constantly, […]
Import VAT and the Importer of Record: Who Can Reclaim It?
If you ship IT hardware at volume, you already have people who handle import VAT. A finance team, a tax adviser, a recovery process that works. This article is not about doing their job. It is about the thing that sits upstream of them and quietly decides whether their process can work at all: how […]
Your First Shipment Into a New Country Will Not Go Smoothly
Nobody tells you this at the start, so we will. Your first shipment into a new country will probably not go smoothly. Not because your team is careless, and not because you picked a difficult market. Because a first entry is a genuinely different exercise from every entry that follows it, and most import plans […]
The EU Cyber Resilience Act: What Hardware Importers Must Do
You have named your importer of record, cleared customs, and checked the CE marking. For connected hardware entering the EU, that is no longer the whole job. The EU Cyber Resilience Act adds a separate market-access condition, cybersecurity, and it introduces a second kind of importer whose duties are defined by law, not by your […]
How to Import ASIC Miners: The Customs, HS Code and IOR Guide
A pallet of new mining rigs can be worth more than a delivery van full of laptops, and it can sit at the border just as easily. Application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) miners are high in value, concentrated in origin, and unusually exposed to the two things customs authorities scrutinise most: how the goods are classified […]
How to Protect High-Value Tech Cargo: The Risks That Actually Cost You
There are two ways to lose a high-value shipment. One is dramatic: a truck is hijacked, a container disappears, a pallet of servers is gone. The other is quiet: the goods sit untouched in a bonded warehouse for three weeks because the paperwork was wrong, the importer was not authorised, or customs flagged the valuation. […]
IT Hardware Import Compliance by Country: Rules That Stop Shipments
IT hardware import regulations by country are rarely identical, even when the equipment is the same. The same server, router, or laptop can clear customs smoothly in one country and sit blocked for weeks in another. The hardware is identical. What changes is the regulation waiting for it on the other side of the border. […]
Ship Loaned or No-Sale Equipment to Canada Without CARM Registration
Here is a situation we see constantly. A US or international company needs to send equipment to Canada. It might be laptops on long-term loan to a client’s staff, demo units, or tools that stay the company’s property and are never sold. With no sale and no money changing hands, it feels simple. Then the […]
Can AI Replace Your Importer of Record? What It Can and Cannot Do
If you move high-value equipment across borders, servers, GPUs, networking hardware, medical devices, you have almost certainly asked a version of this question in 2026: can an AI tool now handle the import side, so I do not need to pay for an importer of record? It is a fair question, and getting the answer […]
Power of Attorney for Customs: What It Authorises, Who Stays Liable, and Why It Is Not a Formality
A power of attorney for customs is the document that lets a broker or agent transact customs business in your name. Almost every import that clears through a third party rests on one, and most importers sign it without reading it, on the assumption that handing over the authority also hands over the risk. It […]