CBP will take an outage to the ACE CERT environment on June 29, 2012 in response to trade software developer requests to deploy fixes to the ACE certification environment prior to deployment to ACE Production, the agency said in CSMS message. The outage will be from noon through 6:30 p.m. EST on June 29. CBP said it would be deploying fixes in advance of their deployment to ACE Production on July 7.

CBP and Simplified Entry (SE) pilot participants started on June 25 a two week period of testing additional volume through the system, said CBP in its ACE Trade Account Owner update for June. The update includes articles on the transition to Rail and Sea Manifest, an update on Simplified Entry, responding to CBP Forms through the ACE Portal, access to the Shared Reports folder, keeping Entry Banks up to date, and clarification on using the In-bond Authorization functionality.

CBP said in a CSMS message it identified a needed correction to the ACE Customs Automated Manifest Interface Requirements (CAMIR) for Ocean Rail manifest, Appendix D.

The current expansion will double the Panama Canal's capacity, and the "resulting economy of scale advantage for larger ships will likely change the logistics chains for both U.S. imports and exports," said Robert Pietrowsky, director of the Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Institute for Water Resources, in a report to Congress June 20 on "U.S. Port and Inland Waterways Modernization: Preparing for Post-Panamax Vessels."

CBP held Webinars on June 13 and 14 to help prepare industry during the ongoing six month transition for ACE e-Manifest: Rail and Sea. Effective September 29, 2012, ACE will be the only approved EDI for transmitting required advance rail and sea cargo information and ABI in-bond transactions to CBP. The June 14th Webinar is available (here).

CBP said since 8 a.m. on June 25 responses to user input (i.e., 355, MR, AR) in ACE PROD have not been generated by CBP. A work ticket has been open CBP will provide an update when the issue has been resolved, CBP said in a CSMS message.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will hold webinars on the CBP Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) Document Imaging System (DIS) Testing, said CBP in a CSMS message. EPA is seeking participants for this first phase of DIS, which begins in July.

CBP said the joint pilot conducted with the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) to test the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) e-Manifest: Rail and Sea (M1) functionality was a success. The Coast Guard became the first Participating Government Agency (PGA) to successfully navigate ACE M1 in production during a series of operational trials in May piloted in Charleston, SC, said CBP. The trials will result in better targeting capability of high risk cargo, improved communication to the trade community, and greater border security.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued the following releases on commercial trade and related issues:

CBP said the ACE Certification environment may be unavailable from 6 a.m. until 8:30 p.m. June 20. EDI transactions submitted during this time will be queued and processed when the system comes back up.