Reprinted from the October 22 Newsletter
The next time you receive a shipment of consumer fireworks produced in China, take a look at the shipping cartons. In the upper right corner of the carton, you should see an 11-digit number like the following example:
49F459/053/22
This number is assigned by the China Customs authorities and is used to
identify the source of the fireworks and when they were produced.
The left most digits are the Factory ID number. This identifying number is
assigned by the China Customs authorities and identifies the factory and
province where the factory is located. For example, “49” is the
provincial code for the Hunan province and “459” is the unique number
assigned to the factory which manufactured the products in the
shipping carton. You will see other province codes, such as “40” for fireworks produced in the Jiangxi province and “72” for fireworks coming out of the Guangxi province.
The middle part of the number is the lot number assigned by China
Customs to a specific lot of shipping cartons and has been approved for
use by the designated factory.
The last two digits represent the year. In the above example, “22” means 2022. The 11-digit number will be on the China Customs export permit, which should be attached to the shipping documents.
Currently, there are 310 valid factory ID numbers in the Hunan Province
(code “49”), 100 valid factory ID numbers in the Jiangxi Province (code
“40”), and 15 in the province of Guangxi (code “72”).
