Wet Bond & Dry Bond Warehouses

These are warehouses that are effectively the other side of customs. Whilst they are in the UK the probability is that no Customs Duty or Vat will have been paid on the good stored.

Without wanting to send anybody to sleep Excise duty is a country specific tax that relates to certain products - the majority of us know what Vat is so I won’t bore people on that one!

A Wet Bond

A Wet Bond is normally one that holds cigarettes or drink – though in the UK there are few cigarette only bonds as they are very high risk – a smallish 25,000 sq ft warehouse can hold many millions of pounds worth of stock.

In a Wet Bond stock can be either duty paid or not – the stock doesn’t have to be held separately but does need to be clearly labelled.

A Wet Bond can contain imports, exports and product for local sale – many Wet Bonds will be 3rd Party Warehouses that receive stock on behalf of traders that will be for export or delivery to their clients within the UK.

A Dry Bond

A dry bond is far simpler to understand – it’s basically everything else other than cigarettes & drinks.

Warehouse Management Systems from Ontech Solutions

At Ontech Solutions we have an application called Vision Warehousing. It is what is referred to as a WMS (Warehouse Management System) and frankly it does what is says on the tin.

Operating a Wet or Dry Bond

To operate a Wet or Dry Bond you need approval from HMRC. Part of this approval will be the systems and processes you use.

It’s important to understand that a WMS isn’t automatically approved by HMRC as an accounts program can be approved for VAT – what is important to know is that Vision Warehousing has multiple approvals from HMRC to be installed and used at Bonded Warehouses across the UK.

So if you ever come across somebody that is talking about Wet or Dry Bonded Warehousing, hopefully you will know just a little bit more – and if they moan about their WMS perhaps you’ll remember Vision Warehousing and that it is a specialist WMS for Bonded Warehouses!