Chapter 15 Animal, vegetable or microbial fats and oils and their cleavage products; prepared edible fats; animal or vegetable waxes

What HS Code 15 covers

This chapter also takes in cleavage products, such as crude glycerol, and prepared edible fats, such as margarine. Wool grease, fish oils and plant waxes sit here too. Animal, vegetable and microbial fats and oils all share the same chapter.

Some goods belong elsewhere. Raw pig and poultry fat that falls under heading 0209 is left out of the lard heading. Check that heading first if your goods are fresh fat from the carcass.

This is the only chapter in its section, so there is no neighbouring chapter to weigh it against. To compare it with other parts of the tariff, open the page with all HS code chapters.

Headings grouped by product

Most heading names end with the words "whether or not refined, but not chemically modified". Read it once and you can skip it everywhere else. It means the oil may be cleaned, but a chemical process has not changed its make-up. Oils that were changed move to headings 1516 or 1518.

The headings fall into five groups:

• Animal fats, headings 1501 to 1506: lard, poultry fat, tallow, fish and marine mammal oils, and wool grease with lanolin.
• Vegetable oils, headings 1507 to 1515: soya-bean, ground nut, olive, palm, sunflower, cotton-seed, coconut, palm kernel, rapeseed, linseed, maize, castor, sesame and microbial oils.
• Modified fats and margarine, headings 1516 to 1518.
• Glycerol, heading 1520.
• Waxes and degras, headings 1521 and 1522, including beeswax, other insect waxes and vegetable waxes.

Crude vs refined: choosing the right six-digit code

Many oils have two codes. One is for crude oil. The other is for oil that is not crude. Soya-bean oil shows the pattern. Under heading 1507, code 150710 is crude and code 150790 is the rest.

Sunflower, coconut and rapeseed oils follow this pattern in headings 1512, 1513 and 1514. To pick a code, take three steps. First, find the heading by the name of the oil. Second, decide if the oil is crude or not. Third, check if it has been chemically modified. If it has, look at headings 1516 to 1518 instead.

Olive oil is split by grade, not just by crude and refined. Crude olive pomace oil has its own place in heading 1510. If you are not sure which code fits, the HS code classifier can help you narrow it down.

How headings 1516, 1517 and 1518 differ

These three headings cause the most mix-ups. All three cover goods that were worked on after pressing, but each covers something different.

Heading 1516 is for goods treated by hydrogenation or esterification and then left as they are. They may be refined, but nothing more is done to them.

Heading 1517 is the home of margarine and edible blends of different oils or fats. It leaves out the goods of heading 1516.

Heading 1518 is for goods changed by other chemical steps, such as boiling, oxidising or drying. It also takes blends that are not fit to eat and are not named elsewhere in the chapter.

A simple test helps. If the only change was hydrogenation or esterification, think 1516. If it is an edible blend or margarine, think 1517. If it was changed in another chemical way, or the mix is not for eating, think 1518.

Import and export data, buyers and suppliers

EximDataX shows shipment-level import and export records from official customs sources. Coverage: 43 direct customs feeds plus 184 mirror-derived countries. Named buyers and named suppliers are available in 38 of the 43 direct markets. Most markets refresh weekly and some refresh daily. You can search by HS code to see who imports and exports a product, and book a free demo.