Vizag sea port: INVTZ1
INVTZ1 is the Indian customs code for Vizag sea port, also written Visakhapatnam. The final character makes it a seaport, where goods leave India by ship.
The port code list records this location as VIZAG SEA, in its own words. That is the string a shipping bill and an eBRC filing will show you, so it is the one to recognise on a document even where the place is usually written another way.
Other names for Vizag sea port
The same customs location is searched for and written about under more than one name. A document that uses one of these is not pointing at a different port, and INVTZ1 is the code in every case.
- Visakhapatnam
How to read the code
Indian port codes follow the UN/LOCODE shape: the two letter country code IN, then a three character location, then one character for the facility type. So INVTZ1 splits as IN for India, VTZ for the location, and 1 for the facility, which is why this one is a seaport, where goods leave India by ship.
The suffixes are: 1 sea port, 2 rail, 4 airport, 6 ICD or CFS, and B land customs station. That is why one city can appear several times: the sea terminal and the air cargo terminal are different customs locations and carry different codes.
What the UN/LOCODE register says about VTZ
The three characters in the middle of INVTZ1 are a UN/LOCODE location, and the register that assigns them keeps its own record of the place. It lists VTZ as Visakhapatnam, in ISO 3166-2 subdivision AP, at 17°42′N, 83°18′E. The entry is approved by the national authority.
That record describes the location, not this terminal. Every code sharing VTZ points at the same place and differs only in the facility suffix, so the register says the same thing about all of them. Where its name and the port code list’s own string differ, the list is the one your document will show: the register names the place, the list names the customs location you file against.
Other codes at VTZ
The same location prefix carries one other code. If a document names a facility type different from the one you expected, it is usually one of these rather than a mistake.
Where this code is used
A port code identifies where a consignment was cleared, and it travels with the export: it is on the shipping bill, and it is one of the fields carried into an eBRC filing when the remittance is mapped to that shipping bill. Getting it wrong is one of the ways a filing that looks right is refused, in the same family as a wrong purpose code or currency code.
The code is also how the bill is looked up. ICEGATE’s public enquiry takes three inputs and the customs location is the first of them, so checking a bill’s status, LEO and EGM starts with the code on this page. If what you need is the document rather than where it has reached, downloading the copy from ICEGATE is a separate route.
If you are filing against a shipping bill for the first time, the step by step on the DGFT portal shows where these fields land, and the full guide covers what the certificate is doing with them. Shipping bills also carry their own obligation in the RBI ledger, which is what EDPMS closure is about.