LATAM Airlines Group has begun to ship its aircraft parts from Chile to its maintenance facility at Miami International Airport for repair and then send them back to South America, all without paying federal import taxes, thanks to its new status as an operator within MIA’s Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) magnet site.
LATAM Group is the first approved operator within MIA’s FTZ magnet site, which allows airport tenants to import materials that can then be manufactured, repaired, stored, and/or re-distributed anywhere on MIA property, with the federal tariffs on those materials deferred, reduced, or eliminated – providing valuable time and cost savings.
Companies within an FTZ are able to defer paying duties until the products exit the site, reduce duties on combined finished products instead of on each individual product, and eliminate duties on products being imported to the site and then re-exported. Companies handling high-traffic commodities at MIA such as pharmaceuticals, electronics, textiles, auto parts, aircraft parts, avionics, machinery equipment, consumer goods, and perishables are ideal operators for MIA’s FTZ magnet site.
MIA continues to rank as the busiest airport in the U.S. and the ninth busiest in the world for international freight. In 2022, MIA matched its record of 2.7 million tons of freight set in 2021, by handling 2.2 million tons of international freight and 500,000 tons of domestic shipments.
The MIA FTZ magnet site, approved by the U.S. Department of Commerce before the pandemic, is an expansion of Miami-Dade County’s existing FTZ 281 granted to PortMiami. To become an FTZ operator, MIA tenants must complete an application with PortMiami and then receive approval from U.S. Customs and Border Protection – an expedited process that takes approximately 30 days.