Virginia Port Authority Foreign-Trade Zone Now Crosses Into North Carolina
Talk of foreign-trade zones is enough to make some folks’ eyes glaze over, but if your business involves moving stuff in and out of ports, FTZs can be a big deal.
Bottom line: They’re federally approved locations that allow the deferral, reduction or elimination of customs duties on imported and “re-exported” goods — i.e. items imported duty-free that might be assembled or repackaged in a foreign-trade zone and then exported, providing at least some temporary financial relief and sometimes more than that.
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The Virginia Port Authority is the “grantee” of one of them — Foreign Trade Zone 20 — which is one of five such zones in the commonwealth.
The port recently announced some good news: The U.S. Commerce Department late last month OK’d the expansion of FTZ 20, as it’s known, into northeastern North Carolina.
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“The benefits of the FTZ can be significant and this decision opens the door in northeast North Carolina to those benefits,” said John Reinhart, executive director and CEO of the Virginia Port Authority, in a statement.
The zone, which encompasses virtually all of southeastern Virginia, including about half of the Eastern Shore, now includes Elizabeth City, North Carolina, as well as Camden, Chowan, Currituck, Gates, Hertford, Pasquotank and Perquimans counties.
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