Scheduled maintenance of a digital platform for international trade at several border crossings in northern Mexico is causing delays and other headaches for importers, exporters, and customs brokers shipping goods into the United States.

In late January, the Mexican Tax Administration Service (SAT) announced a one-week scheduled maintenance outage for the Mexican Digital Window for Foreign Trade (Ventanilla Única de Comercio Exterior Mexicana, or VUCEM) platform from Feb. 8 through Feb. 15.

With the platform down, a contingency plan was put in place by SAT, with shippers required to send all related documents and invoices to their brokers to ensure timeliness of clearance.

Unfortunately, the process has not gone smoothly.

Mexican Customs agents are struggling to generate the necessary paperwork as they must manually handle all customs documents, producing long lines for trucks and intermodal shipments, including trains.

The resulting delays of up to six hours have caused chaos at the Tijuana border crossing, according to the Animal Político website. The situation at the Reynosa and Ciudad Juárez border crossings is not much better, with hundreds of vehicles waiting to be cleared through customs.

Produce Bluebook, a service provided by Blue Book Services that helps businesses manage financial risk within the produce supply chain, said there were reports of eight-hour waits at South Texas points of entry.

It also warned that produce shipments could be delayed at other major points of entry including Nogales, Arizona, and McAllen, Texas.

Freight shipping and logistics company Mexicom Logistics describes VUCEM as a platform that “centralizes the procedures required for importing and exporting, providing a single channel for the exchange of information between users and authorities.”

The platform allows users to electronically submit all necessary documents and information for import and export operations through a single interface.

With reports from Animal Político and Blue Book Services