Food and beverage
How to collect from third parties what TRACES will ask for
The form takes a morning. The expensive part is the vessel owner, the warehouse and the lab answering in time.
Anyone who has run a full season processing in CATCH reaches the same conclusion: the system was never the problem. The previous articles describe where to click, and that is learned in an afternoon. What is not learned —what is suffered season after season— is that almost everything you have to type is held by another company, and that company does not work to your deadline.
Who holds what, and why it takes so long
| Data | Who holds it | Why it takes time |
|---|---|---|
| Vessel, licence and validity | The vessel owner | They are at sea |
| FAO area, dates, weights | The fishing log | It must be requested upstream |
| Transhipments and position | The master | It never occurs to them to mention it |
| Entry and exit weights | The warehouse, abroad | They do not know what it is for |
| A legible paper certificate | The exporter | They send a blurred scan |
Important
None of the five rows depends on you, and you will be held to account for all five. That is the sector's whole asymmetry: the responsibility is the importer's and the information is somebody else's. Any real improvement lies in how you ask, not in how you fill things in.
What changes the response rate
- 1
Ask when closing the purchase, not when processing
At that moment the supplier wants paying and answers. Two weeks later, priorities differ.
- 2
Ask for the specific data, not for «the documentation»
«FAO area, catch dates and whether there was a transhipment» gets answered; «the paperwork» does not.
- 3
Ask about transhipments explicitly
The one data point that never appears on its own, because the supplier does not consider it documentation.
- 4
State the format in the request itself
Position in degrees-minutes-seconds; weights with a decimal point and no thousands separator.
- 5
And record who sent what, and when
If a figure turns out wrong, you need to know where it came from.
And what the platform does about it
- 1
Ask each third party through the channel that person uses
A vessel owner answers a link on their phone; an email with an attachment, not so much.
- 2
Chase without anybody writing the reminder
Chasing is the work that least needs a person behind it.
- 3
Gather everything in the consignment's file
Which is how it gets asked about later: by shipment, not by supplier.
- 4
And flag what is missing before the deadline, not after
The gap shows while it can still be closed.
Watch out
Be honest about the limit: none of this makes a vessel owner answer from the sea. What it does is ensure the request went out on day one, that chasing does not depend on somebody remembering, and that when the vessel reaches port there is a link waiting rather than a buried email. The improvement is not magic; it is calendar.
Worth knowing
The specific requirements of each formality are described in the earlier articles in this series, verified in 2026-08 against https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/IMSOC/tracesnt-help. What documentation you must require, from whom and with what scope is determined by the competent authority and your adviser — here we cover how to obtain in time what you already know is needed.
›Can I compel a supplier to give me this data?
That is contractual and a question for your adviser. What you can do is ask when you have leverage: at purchase.
›What if the supplier does not understand my request?
Ask for the data in their language and through their channel. Much non-response is simply non-comprehension.
›Is recording who sent each figure worth it?
The day a figure is wrong, it is the difference between correcting it and not knowing where it came from.
A real case
The situation
The vessel owner replies when reaching port, ten days later.
What you do
- Sends the request when closing the purchase, not when processing
What you get
A link waits for them instead of a buried email.
The situation
Nobody asked about transhipments and they surface at the end.
What you do
- Includes the explicit question in the initial request
What you get
Box 6 or 7 does not hold up the certificate.
The situation
Weights arrive in a format the system rejects.
What you do
- States the required format when requesting the data
What you get
It arrives usable first time.
The situation
A figure turns out wrong and nobody knows who provided it.
What you do
- Records author and date for every data point received
What you get
The correction goes to the right source.
The situation
Documentation is filed by supplier and questions come by shipment.
What you do
- Gathers everything in the consignment's file
What you get
It is answered where the question comes from.
The situation
One person spends the season chasing by email.
What you do
- Re-sends reminders without anybody writing them
What you get
That person goes back to their job.
This article answers
- requesting documentation from fish suppliers
- collecting vessel owner data for the certificate
- how do i get catch data from my supplier
- document control for fishery suppliers
- chasing documentation for fish imports