"Customs and Border Protection is currently screening imports from China of stone materials such as granite, marble, slate and similar stone for highly dangerous tremolite asbestos. In order to avoid unnecessarily holding shipments of low-risk stone products, Customs and Border Protection requests that customs brokers substantially improve the quality of goods descriptions for items falling within chapters 25 and 68, as soon as possible.

Importations of chapter 25 or 68 goods with generic descriptions such as:

• Stone products
• Articles of stone
• Slate tiles
• Marble tiles
• Granite tiles
• Limestone articles
• Polished mosaics
• Natural Slate
• Natural stone
• Chinese slate
• Granite benchtops
• Other monumental / building stone simply cut
• Pebbles

may be subject to high levels of scrutiny - including assessment of importer paperwork, cargo examination and/or laboratory analysis. This may involve substantial delays to clearance and additional storage or other costs, to be borne by the importer. The potential for these delays to occur will be significantly reduced if Customs and Border Protection is able to determine from ICS goods description information that the imported goods do not fall in one of the high risk categories.

It is particularly important that the colour, type of stone (eg: marble, slate, granite), product number and form of the stone (eg: wall tiles, stackstone, mosaic stone) are reported correctly.

Please input a separate line for each different type of product listed on supplier invoices. For example:

• "Red quartzite ledgestone - Ruby Red - 150mm x 160mm" rather than "quartz tiles"
• "Pearly grey white granite - Swirl - benchtops 1500mm x 1000mm" rather than "articles of marble"
• "Black granite stackstone cladding - GH9064" rather than "cladding".