Alba Wheels Up and Mesur.io Debut Forced Labor Compliance, Traceability Solution
Alba Wheels Up on Thursday announced the debut of a tech solution that it said will help importers comply with forced labor legislation.
Created with supply chain data management firm Mesur.io, the tool aims to help middle market companies who source from China avoid trade disruptions resulting from the enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act (UFLPA), the customs broker said.
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Mesur.io has been a vendor for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) since 2020, using its AI to amass and process open-source data across global languages in real time from news, social media and satellite imagery. It uses those data points, along with trade and shipping data from users, to form a “risk score” for shipments.
“The scoring Alba and mesur.io are providing to importers is designed to work toward due diligence and be part of an overall compliance program,” Alba executive vice president of growth and strategy Vincent Iacopella said. “The CBP Operational Guidance Document for Importers issued in June 2022 mentions Supply Chain Mapping and Tracing as a valuable tool.”
Signed into law in December 2021 and implemented in June 2022, the UFLPA has presented both enforcement and compliance challenges for CBP and American importers. Traceability and transparency have become paramount as the law extends beyond Chinese exports to products manufactured in other sourcing locales, which could feature inputs or materials that originated in Xinjiang. As of July, just over 36 percent of shipments halted by CBP have come directly from China. Malaysia and Vietnam were responsible for the shipment of $1.4 billion in flagged goods—over six times the amount shipped from China.
Shipments entering the U.S. from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) are subject to a rebuttable presumption that they are fully or partly made with forced labor. Automated supply chain transparency tools can help brands and retailers work toward compliance by identifying areas of risk in their supply chains, the partners said.
“We believe the mersur.io platform’s use of Auto Machine Learning, Open-Source Intelligence, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) provides the best solution to demonstrate due diligence for US Customs UFLPA guidelines,” Mesur.io CEO Tom Rump said. With user data playing a key role in the tool’s efficacy, the group takes care to protect their privacy. “We ensure that customer data is not compromised in any way, thereby protecting a company’s privileged information,” he added. “Our system then produces an easy to interpret score to gauge the relative level of compliance.”
“This is a powerful tool available today for importers wishing to support their compliance programs to minimize risks in the supply chain,” Iacopella added.
Since the UFLPA was enacted, CBP has detained more than $1.7 billion in goods over suspected links to Xinjiang forced labor. Apparel, footwear and textiles, along with industrial and manufacturing materials, have represented $98.8 million worth of detentions.
