Customs4trade NV (C4T), a leading cloud-based customs declarations platform, raised €4 million in new capital to bring it to sustainable profitability and execute its growth plans in the UK and Europe.
19th April 2023, Mechelen, Belgium
C4T, known in the sector for its fully automated single message/double filing system as well as Special Procedures modules like Customs Warehousing, Inward Processing/Outward Processing and Returned Goods Relief, will use the funds to develop new products and services for its customers as well as cement its leading position amongst UK and European importers and exporters as the customs declarations platform of choice.
C4T’s CAS platform allows companies to fully digitise their customs declarations processes giving them more transparency, control and oversight of customs data in a fully compliant environment. CAS enables customers to implement more efficient inventory management, optimised trade procedures, and improved compliance. Some 95% of the customs declarations processed by C4T have zero manual intervention.
“Digitised customs declarations is the oil that greases the wheels of international trade and C4T has some of the highest-grade oil in the business,” said Chief Executive Rupert Spiegelberg. “We are proud to be supporting so many incredible international brands and will be using this new investment to continue to improve our platform and stay the leading provider of cloud-based customs SaaS solutions.”
In Q1 2023, C4T’s CAS digital platform processed almost triple the number of customs filings per month compared to the same period a year earlier. C4T, which employees some 80 people in offices in Wigan, UK, and Mechelen, Belgium, is now supporting import and export trade flows for customers in the UK, Belgium, Netherlands and Ireland such as Honda, Aldi, Isuzu, Agristo and many other manufacturers and household brands, in particular in the Automotive, FMCG, Retail and Manufacturing sectors.
Approximately 600 million import and export customs declarations are made in Europe each year according to the World Customs Organisation 2021/2022 Annual Report and the overwhelming majority of these are processed through the mainly manual, high-cost network of brokers across the continent. C4T’s mission is to digitise this sector to reduce cost, processing time, and errors as well as help companies optimise their tax liabilities.
The CAS platform is connected to government customs declaration systems in the UK, Belgium, Netherlands and Ireland as well as all relevant major ports and other points of entry in these countries. We are also in the process of integrating our systems with upgraded government platforms in Belgium (IDMS) and the Netherlands (DMS) due later this year, having successfully integrated into the UK’s new CDS and Ireland’s new AES government customs declaration platforms in recent months.
The capital increase was supported by existing venture capital investors, France’s Hi-Innov and Germany’s 42Cap, the management team, and a group of prominent European angel investors.
Lees het persbericht in het Nederlands