Official customs seals and trader sealing

Find out how to recognise official customs seals and how authorised traders can use their own seals in place of official customs seals.

Use the following guidance to find more information about whether your goods need sealing:

To find out more about the use of seals contact imports and exports: general enquiries.

An official customs seal is an indicative seal that a customs officer may apply to identify goods under customs control. It may be applied in addition to a trader’s commercial seal.

If you receive goods in the UK secured by an official customs seal, you must inform your local HMRC control office as soon as they arrive.

Unless you’re an authorised consignee, you must not remove an official seal without prior approval from customs. Unauthorised breakage or removal of an official seal is an offence under Customs and EU law.

In the UK there is one type of official customs seal currently in use.

The body is made of painted aluminium. It bears the words ‘Customs GB’ and a serial number.

The cable is made of steel wire, 1 millimetre in diameter and 180 millimetres long.

Under certain conditions, you may be authorised to use your own seals for securing goods under customs control. Seals provide an additional way to identify the consignment.

You must apply for authorisation under Article 233(4)(c) of EU Regulation 952/13 and Articles 55 paragraph 1 (b) and 81 of the Common Transit Convention.

You will need to meet the conditions of Article 39(a), (b) and (d) of EU Regulation 952/13 and Article 57 (2) of the Common Transit Convention. You are deemed as meeting these conditions if you’re an authorised economic operators (AEO).

You can apply to use your own seals.

If you’re authorised to use your own seals in place of official customs seals, you must:

You should only use legitimate manufacturers’ seals.

Seal requirements are set out in Article 301 of the Union Customs Code Implementing Regulation (2015/2447). These requirements are assumed to be met by any seal that conforms to the International Standard No 17712: 2013 ‘Freight containers — Mechanical Seals’.

Seals with high-security features should be used for containerised transports whenever possible.

Customs should accept seals approved by EU member states, unless they specifically state otherwise.

The seals must:

Identification marks of seals must be impossible to falsify and difficult to reproduce.

The form and dimensions of the seals can vary depending on the method of sealing used. You must make sure that identification marks are easy to read no matter what the dimensions of the seal are.

The types of trader seal that we accept for control purposes fall into the following groups.

We also accept bar box seals used to secure aircraft bar boxes.

We accept the following seals:

We accept the following seals:

We accept the following seals:

If you discover a seal has been tampered with or broken on:

The customs officer may ask you to explain how any seal breakage and damage occurred.

In all cases of unauthorised seal breakage, you must get a customs officer’s permission before you remove or unload the goods originally secured by that seal.

You must notify customs of the accident or incident as soon as possible.

Whenever possible, you should get prior authorisation from customs to break seals or transfer goods from one vehicle to another.

An account of the incident must be noted on the transit declaration. The goods and the declaration must be presented to the nearest customs authority. When customs are content that the operation may continue, they will reseal the goods and endorse the declaration accordingly.

Read the HMRC Charter to find out what you can expect from us and what we expect from you.

The Acme ‘T’ lock seal is no longer an official customs seal and has been removed from the 'How to recognise the types of seal' section. There is now only one type of official customs seal in use.

Guidance for seals manufacturers explaining how they can apply for acceptance of their products in the 'UK standards' sub-section of the 'Apply to use your own seals' section has been removed. Signum Services Ltd no longer operate the HMRC ‘Security Seals Testing Authority’. The address to write to if you have suggestions to improve this notice has also been updated.

Contact information for the Security Seal Testing Authority has been updated in the 'UK standards' section.

A new seal has been added to 'Group 1 — seals that can withstand a force of 1,000 kilograms'.

First published.