By Carrie Wen on 10 January 2011

The International Symposium on eSeal Application, hosted by GS1 Taiwan and supervised by Directorate General of Customs of Taiwan, was held on Nov. 16th, 2011. Five GS1 MOs and four Asian countries’ Customs from Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia witnessed the real EPC deployment in Taiwan. This event was to build the awareness of applying EPC/RFID in Customs as well as to drive the adoption of GS1 Standards by providing more information and sharing best practices on EPC/RFID.

This event included a half-day conference and another half-day site visit to the Port of Taichung. Participants were from four Asian countries’ Customs, as well as from GS1global office and MOs, such as GS1 Singapore, GS1HK, GS1 Japan, GS1 Malaysia and GS1 Saudi Arabia. Other 100 domestic participants including the representatives from T&L companies also joined this event.

Delegates from global office who participated this event as speakers are : Ms. Yuliya Shevchenko, GS1 Group Manager of Transport & Logistics and Ms. Shirley Arsentault, EPCglobal TLS Facilitator. Mr. James Perng, Manager of GS1 TW, also presented the topic of “The progress of eSeal international standard and its current applications” and explained the future development of Taiwan’s National standard of eSeal data.

While EPC Gen2 eSeal standard was under development in EPCglobal, four countries’ Customs and GS1 MOs gathered and visited the EPC implementation at the Port of Taichung which duplicated the one at Kaohsiung Port. Participants were impressed and witnessed the real application. Taiwan Customs demonstrated how the EPC/RFID enabled escort operation and how the EPCIS worked within the ordinary Customs systems.

Apart from the symposium, EPCglobal TLS Workshop was held next to it in Taipei. This meeting brought forth several important conclusions which contributed to eSeal standard development and how the EPCIS should be promoted. GS1 Malaysia, GS1 Hong Kong, GS1 Singapore and NRI were all agreed to support the SBN for the eSeal.

Since Taiwan government adopted EPC Gen2 eSeal solution in port management under the project “In-transit Container Escort Exemption Program at the Port of Kaohsiung”, Taiwan has successfully demonstrated EPC Gen2 solution on Customs. In order to advance this implementation and extend it as an open system for cross border management, Taiwan Customs now looks forward to a global pilot test and practicing the Customs information visibility.