Eastman-Kodak's Story: Managing Foreign Trade Zones with Global Trade Services

The United States Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) program provides companies with a range of financial benefits by allowing them to reduce, eliminate, or defer duty payments on goods manufactured or stored in FTZs before they enter U.S. commerce or are exported. FTZs are secure areas located throughout the United States that are treated as outside U.S. customs territory for duty assessments and other customs entry procedures.

Companies using FTZs may be warehouse distributors and/or manufacturers. A manufacturer, for example, that admits foreign components into the FTZ can pay the duty rate on either the foreign components or the final product, whichever is lower—resulting in reduced or eliminated duty payments. Distributors can also benefit by storing goods in FTZs indefinitely and thereby deferring duty payments until the goods enter U.S. commerce.

Over the past several years automation resources to help manage FTZs have improved drastically. More and more companies are looking to gain a competitive advantage by deploying a Global Trade Management tool to streamline and eliminate cumbersome manual FTZ operations.

In this webcast, professionals from KPMG’s Trade and Customs Services practice will cover the steps required to raise a new zone as well as the benefits and operational challenges of managing a FTZ.  Guest speaker, Paul Smith, International Trade and Compliance and Corporate Compliance Officer, Eastman-Kodak, will share his story of deploying Global Trade Services to help automate these functions, and manage costs.

We hope this customer system implementation success story provides attendees with valuable insights and lessons learned.  Please join us to hear more about how you may benefit from a FTZ and subsequent automation.