Don’t Let a State Variation Change Cause a Delay

If you have shipped your dangerous goods by air lately and your destination was Brazil, you may have noticed that your carrier has stopped the shipment and contacted you for more information. The reason for the delay was probably due to a change to a state variation in IATA that just took effect in January of 2023. It is important that you follow this variation, otherwise there is a good chance that your dangerous goods shipment will experience some sort of delay. The changed variation can be found in section 2.8 In IATA and is called BRG-05.

What Does BRG-05 Require?

Previously, we published a blog on the importance of checking State and Operator Variations in IATA. Variations can be found in Section 2.8 of the IATA Regulations. Whether it’s the origin state, transiting states, and/or destination state, all of them play an important part when transporting dangerous goods.

In this particular case when shipping by air to Brazil, there was a change to State Variation BRG-05 that appears in the 64^th Edition of the IATA dangerous goods regulations. The variation now reads below:

BRG-05 For flights involving Brazil as the State of Origin or Destination, the following documents must accompany the consignment:

—in case of packagings manufactured in Brazil with a UN specification mark, ANAC’s packaging certificate of approval, and the conformity declaration issued by the packaging manufacturer; or

—in case of packagings manufactured abroad with a UN specification mark, packaging certificate of approval, or any equivalent document issued by other civil aviation authorities or any other appropriate national authorities. The operator must verify, during the acceptance process, if the documents mentioned above, as applicable, are present.

Essentially, this variation now requires the shipper to provide a UN certificate that proves that the UN packaging used is certified to ship dangerous goods. While it is not the full UN test report that is required, the certificate page from the test report which represents the UN marking on the packaging must be included with the documentation. An equivalent document such as a Transport Canada Certification can be used as well.

How can I comply with The Variation?

The only way to comply with this State Variation is to obtain the one-page UN packaging Certificate for your packaging and include it with your dangerous goods paperwork. At ICC, our UN packaging has all the UN test Certificates for our combination.

Did you purchase our packaging and would like some help?
Do you have questions about shipping dangerous goods by air?
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