Traders moving retail consignments from Great Britain to Northern Ireland under the Northern Ireland Retail Movement Scheme must now give a country of origin for every product on the packing list.
GOV The scheme's how-to-move-goods guidance previously required the country of origin for most or some products; the revised text requires it for all products moving via NIRMSGOV, in the form of a 2-digit International Organization for Standardisation (ISO) codeGOV. That universal rule expressly includes products that are food contact materials. The fallback instruction to enter 'X' where there is no country of origin has been removed.
The change sweeps away long lists of goods that previously did not need a country of origin in most cases. Gone are the exemptions for shelf-stable composite products — bread, cakes, biscuits, confectionery, coffee and tea preparations, pasta, cereals, soups and flavourings among themGOV — as well as the separate lists covering beer and cider, cereals, dried herbs and spices, flavourings, flour, frozen chips and peas, jam, pasta and curry sauces, syrups, sugar, nuts and seeds, olive oil, peanut butter, plant-based milks, popcorn and crisps, processed or canned fruit and vegetables, rice, soft drinks, bottled waters, tea and coffee, condiments, vinegar, wine and deregulated fruits such as bananas, coconuts, dates and pineapples.GOV In their place stands a single narrow exemption: no country of origin is needed only for non-NIRMS products — goods not moving under the scheme — that move under the European Union's official controls regulation rules.GOV
The page keeps the code-selection rules for animal, plant and composite products. Use 'GB' for products produced in Great Britain and packaged here, or produced outside the United Kingdom but processed and packaged in Great Britain.GOV Use the EU country code for products produced in an EU country and packaged there, produced outside the EU but processed and packaged in the EU, or brought through official controls at an EU border control post.GOV Use the rest-of-world country code for products both produced and packaged outside Great Britain and the EU that have not gone through official controls at an EU border control post.GOV For products of animal origin, 'processed' means processing that substantially changes the initial product, for example by heating, smoking, curing, maturing, drying, marinating, extraction or extrusion, while slicing, dividing, mincing, boning, grating or repackaging of animal products is not defined as processed. One small relaxation accompanies the tightening: where unprocessed products of animal origin or fresh fruit, vegetables, cut flowers and foliage come from multiple countries, the origins may now be separated by commas or ampersands, where previously only commas were allowed.
Two surrounding points are unchanged and worth keeping distinct. The requirements for rules of origin are different for customs purposes — the packing-list origin code is a scheme requirement, not a customs-origin determinationGOV. And each general certificate still needs its own packing list covering all of the NIRMS productsGOV; one packing list cannot cover two general certificates, the commodity code remains optional, and the declaration for rest-of-world goods that need sanitary and phytosanitary checks is still required.
Legal basis: the Windsor Framework (Retail Movement Scheme) Regulations 2023 (SI 2023/896) establishing the Scheme, whose packing-list and country-of-origin rules are set out in the NIRMS how-to-move-goods guidance.
Review every GB-to-NI retail packing list template and process to capture a 2-digit ISO country of origin for all NIRMS products, removing reliance on the deleted food-exemption lists.
