The paperwork that travels with a gold shipment to Dubai

A shipment of gold from outside the UAE is cleared, received and processed on the strength of the documents that travel with it. When those documents are complete, the metal moves from the airport to our office to the refinery without a pause. When they are not, it waits at customs. This post sets out what our foreign-company checklist asks for, and why each item is there. The checklist itself can be downloaded from the Open an account page.

Before the first shipment

A company incorporated outside the UAE is onboarded on seven items: its trade licence, certificate of incorporation, VAT registration, memorandum of association, the passport or ID of the owner, its export licence and a working email address. The export licence is the one item that does not appear on the UAE-company list, and it is the one most often missing. Without it the company cannot lawfully send gold out of its own jurisdiction, so we cannot lawfully receive it.

With every shipment

Three documents go in with the metal, every time:

• The commercial invoice, as three originals, each stamped and signed
• The packing list, as three originals, each stamped and signed
• The certificate of origin, as an original

Three originals are needed because the invoice and packing list are handled by more than one party on arrival: customs, our clearing agent and our own records each keep one. Copies are not accepted in place of originals at customs.

What the invoice must say

Customs clearance turns on the invoice, so its contents are prescribed. It has to state:

1. A description of the contents, as gold bars, with the HS code 71081210
2. The net weight of the contents
3. The gross weight of the shipment
4. The value of the contents
5. A description of the container or containers
6. The seller, which is your company, and the buyer, which is Meridas Gold Trading L.L.C
7. The country of origin, written out as a line of its own

Our full invoicing details, including the tax registration number and address to use for the buyer, are printed on the checklist. Use them exactly as printed; an invoice raised to a trading name or a shortened address is a common cause of delay.

Why the country of origin is a line of its own

The origin line is not a customs formality. It is the first link in the chain of custody that the OECD Due Diligence Guidance and the UAE’s responsible-sourcing rules require us to establish for every lot, and it is what the certificate of origin backs up. Metal whose origin is not stated, or whose stated origin does not match the certificate, cannot be accepted, however good the assay turns out to be. The supply-chain form completed at onboarding records the same origin, so the three documents should agree with each other.

Hand-carrying metal

Some clients bring the metal in personally rather than shipping it. That is permitted, and it follows a set procedure at Dubai’s airport. Before the flight, we need the passenger’s passport details and the flight ticket, so our agent knows who and when to expect.

On arrival:

1. The passenger leaves the aircraft with the goods in hand and goes to passport control. If asked the purpose of the visit, they declare that they are hand-carrying gold.
2. Between passport control and the baggage hall there is an X-ray point. The passenger tells the officer there that they are carrying gold, then continues to the customs area to declare it.
3. Customs takes the gold into deposit and issues a Detained Receipt for it. The passenger asks customs to email a copy of the receipt to moc.dlogsadirem@ofni.
4. The passenger sends us a photograph or scan of the receipt. Our agent then completes customs clearance and brings the gold to our Dubai office.

The gold does not leave the airport with the passenger, and the passenger does not need to arrange clearance themselves. The Detained Receipt is the document that lets our agent do that, which is why the copy has to reach us promptly.

After the metal arrives

From the Dubai office the lot goes to Sharjah for melting, assay and refining, on the timeline described in from intake to settlement. The account-opening documents, the shipment documents and the assay certificate are the three sets of paper that, together, let us say exactly where every gram came from and what it was worth.