CBP ACEopedia for July 2012 provides an update to progress in ACE to date. The update on progress was the biggest changes between the new ACEopedia and previous versions.

CBP said the deployment to ACE Production on July 7 is rescheduled for July 14, due to power outages in the Washington-area.

CBP posted documents on changes to the Customs and Trade Interface Requirements (CATAIR), CBP said in CSMS message.

CBP issued a reminder that the three-month transition has begun for ACE e-Manifest: Rail and Sea. Effective Sept. 29, ACE will be the only approved EDI for transmitting required advance rail and sea cargo information and ABI in-bond transactions to CBP, it said. As of June 29, 91% of ocean carriers and 70% of ABI software developers impacted by the transition to M1 have either completed or are in the on boarding process. Those that aren't in the process need to contact a client representative, said CBP. All rail carriers are either in production or currently testing.

CBP released its Trade Newsletter for the 2012 third quarter. The newsletter provides an update on its recent ruling on the treatment of post-import adjustments, the Simplified Entry pilot, progress on ACE, the Centers for Excellence and Expertise, collaboration between CBP and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and the update to 19 CFR Part 111 broker regulations.

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).