February 2006

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Cargo Control Number

Further to our letter to the marine community dated December 6, 2006, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) will proceed with the elimination of the MA field of the Cargo Control Number (CCN) in the ANSI format. Effective April 1, 2006, the CCN for marine cargo reports will be comprised of the carrier code plus the ocean bill of lading number. *The new CCN format applies to A6A cargo reports, S10 supplementary cargo reports and E10 empty container cargo reports for all movement types (import, export, in-transit and FROB).

The CBSA encourages marine carriers to make this change as early as possible. New cargo reports, with an MA field, transmitted after April 1, 2006 will be rejected by the system. The system will allow changes to be made to cargo reports with an MA field that was originally transmitted prior to April 1, 2006.

Those clients using the EDIFACT format do not need to eliminate any fields. The CBSA does however recommend that the CCN be constructed in the same manner, i.e., carrier code plus the ocean bill of lading number.

*Note: A6 – conveyance reports are not affected as their report number only requires the BI and MA. The change to the A6A cargo report is to reduce the concatenation (linkage) of the BI, MA and OB.