ePhyto Trial Announced by Defra for Dutch Plant & Plant Products Imports

1 Dec 2023

As laid out in the Border Target Operating Model (BTOM), Defra will shortly be running a pilot to introduce the exchange of Electronic Phytosanitary Certificates (ePhytos) to plants and plant products import notifications on IPAFFS. This is a movement towards greater automation and integration of data.

The pilot will run for approximately a month with a sample of importers from the Netherlands using the new functionality. As part of the pilot, there will be an option that appears in IPAFFS called ‘clone a certificate’. If you use IPAFFS to submit pre-notifications on the imports of your plants or plant products, please do not attempt to use the ‘clone a certificate’ option unless you have been contacted by Defra or the Dutch equivalent, and told you are part of the pilot group.

Defra will only be able to provide this service for imports from the Netherlands for plants, plant products, and other objects.

The ePhyto process will save users time when creating notifications on IPAFFS. This will mean that you can copy details from a phytosanitary certificate to create a new import notification, depending on the type of commodity and country you're importing from.

On successful completion of the pilot, the aim will be to roll this service out further to all importers, and imports from other countries. Further updates on this will be available shortly.