1404 90 — Vegetable products n.e.s

1404 Materials of plant origin, not elsewhere specified or included: 1404 20 – cotton linen 1404 90 – Other

This heading covers all products of plant origin not elsewhere specified or included in the Nomenclature. It includes: (A) Cotton Lint. Seeds of some varieties of cotton after removal of cotton fibers still remain covered with fine down formed from very short (maximum 5 mm) fibers. These fibers are known as cotton linen. Lint is too short for yarn; the very high cellulose content of the cast makes it an ideal raw material for producing smokeless gunpowder, producing chemical fibers (e.g., rayon) and polymeric materials on a hot cellulo basis. Sometimes it is also used in the production of certain types of paper, filters and as a filler in the rubber industry. Cotton lint is included in this heading regardless of its purpose and whether it is raw, purified, bleached, colored or impregnated with absorbents. It can be presented in bulk or pressed in the form of sheets or plates. This heading does not cover: (a) wool impregnated or coated with pharmaceutical substances or packaged in forms or packages for retail sale intended for use in medicine, surgery, dentistry or veterinary medicine (heading 3005); (b) other wool (heading 5601). (B) Vegetable raw materials used mainly for dyeing or tanning. Such products are used mainly for dyeing or tanning or in the manufacture of coloring or tannin extracts. Materials may be

crude, cleaned, dried, ground or powdered (whether or not compressed). The most important of these are: (1) Woods: sumac, fustic (including so-called "young fustic"), logwood, quebracho, brazilwood (including peachwood and sappanwood), chestnut, red sandalwood. It should be noted that woods used primarily for dyeing or tanning are classified in this heading only when in the form of chips, shavings or in the form of sawdust or powder. In other forms such wood is excluded (Chapter 44). (2) Barks: of various varieties of oak (including quercitron and the second bark of the cork oak), chestnut, silver birch, sumac, "young fustic", wattle, mimosa, mangrove, hemlock and willow. (3) Roots and similar parts of plants: madder, dock, common barberry (Berberis vulgaris) and alkanet. (4) Fruits, berries and seeds: algarobilla pods, valonia, myrobalans, divi-divi (libi-dibi), buckthorn berries (also known as Persian berries, Turkish seeds, yellow berries, etc.), seeds and fruit pulp of annatto, walnut shells and almond shells. (5) Gall nuts: Aleppo galls, Chinese galls, Hungarian galls, pine galls, etc. Gall nuts are excrescences on the leaves or shoots of various oaks and other trees, formed as a result of damage by gall-forming insects of the genus Cynips. They contain tannin and gallic acid and are used in the manufacture of dyes and certain inks. (6) Stems, trunks, leaves and flowers: stems, trunks and leaves of woad, sumac, "young fustic", holly, myrtle, sunflower, henna, weld, indigo-producing plants; leaves of the mastic tree (lentisk); flowers of safflower (bastard saffron) and dyer's greenweed (Genista tinctoria; woadwaxen). It should be noted that saffron styles and stigmas are excluded (heading 0910). (7) Lichens from which dyes known as orchil (or archil), cudbear and litmus are obtained (Rocella tinctoria and fuciformis, Lichen tartareus and Lichen parellus or Umbilicaria pustulata). The heading excludes: (a) tanning extracts of vegetable origin and tannins (tannic acids), including water-extracted gall-nut tannin (heading 3201); (b) dyewood extract and other colouring extracts of vegetable origin (heading 3203). (C) Hard seeds, pips, hulls and nuts, of a kind used for carving. These products are used mainly for the manufacture of buttons, beads, rosaries and other small fancy goods.

These include, inter alia: (1) Corozo, which are seeds ("nuts") of some varieties of palms grown mainly in South America. Their texture, hardness and color resemble a new bone layer, hence their common name "vegetable ivory". (2) Seeds (nuts) of the doom palm, which grows mainly in East and Central Africa (Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, etc.). (3) Similar "nuts" of some other palm trees (e.g., palm trees or taihi palm trees). (4) Canna cochineal seeds (Canna indica); beaded tree seeds (Abrus precatorius); date seeds; piassav palm nuts. (5) Coconut shells. The products mentioned above are included in this heading as a whole or sliced (as is often the case with coroso nuts or doom palms), but not processed in another way. When otherwise treated, they are not included (usually heading 9602 or 9606). (D) Materials of plant origin used mainly for padding or soft padding (e.g., caps, vegetable fibers, sea jack), including in the form of layers, on or without a substrate. This category includes plant materials mainly used for stuffing upholstered furniture, sofa cushions, mattresses, pillows, saddles and harnesses, lifebuoys, etc. These materials are included in this heading even if they have secondary uses. This heading does not include materials of vegetable origin used for padding but named elsewhere or used predominantly for other purposes, such as wood wool (heading 4405), ground cork (heading 4501), coconut fibre (or cotton) (heading 5305) and waste textile fibres of vegetable origin (chapters 52 and 53). This group of products includes, inter alia: (1) Kapok, commercially called e pale yellow or sometimes brownish down from the seed surfaces of various trees of the family Bombacaceae. The fibers are 15 – 30 mm long, depending on the species, elastic, waterproof, light in weight, but fragile. (2) Some other species of fluff plant (sometimes called plant silk), formed by single-celled hairs of the seeds of some tropical plant species (for example, Asclepias). (3) Products known as vegetable hair, including Algerian fibre (crin vegetal) derived from the leaves of dwarf palms (in particular Chamaerops humilis). (4) A seabird (e.g., Zostera marina), a species of sea plant similar to hair or grass. (5) Naturally twisted fibres (foin frisé) obtained from the leaves of certain reeds of the genus Carex.

This heading covers these materials in the raw state or cleaned, bleached, combed or otherwise worked (but not spun). They remain classified in this heading even when imported in bundles. The heading also covers the vegetable materials described above in the form of layers on a backing of textile fabric, paper, etc., or placed between sheets of textile fabric, paper, etc., held together by stapling or simple stitching. (E) Vegetable materials of a kind used primarily in brooms or in brushes (e.g., broomcorn, piassava, couch-grass, istle), whether in hanks, bundles or in bulk. This category covers vegetable materials of a kind used primarily in brooms or brushes, etc., even if they have secondary uses for other purposes. But this category does not cover vegetable materials specified elsewhere in the Nomenclature or not used primarily for the manufacture of brushes or brooms, for example, bamboo, whether or not split, reeds and rushes (heading 1401), alfa, esparto and broom stems, if prepared for textile use (heading 5303 (broom) or heading 5305 (alfa and esparto)), coconut fibre (or coir) (heading 5305). This group includes, inter alia: (1) Broom panicles of rice, broomcorn (Sorghum vulgare var. technicum) or of certain varieties of millet, without seeds. (2) Piassava, a fibre obtained from the leaves of certain tropical palms. The best known varieties are Brazilian and African piassava. (3) Roots of couch-grass, a grass of the genus Andropogon, growing in dry sandy soil. This plant, sometimes called "brush grass", is a weed common in Europe, in particular in Hungary and Italy. Couch-grass roots should not be confused with the roots of vetiver (khus-khus grass, or Indian couch-grass), from which an essential oil is obtained, or with the roots of medicinal couch-grass, which has therapeutic properties (heading 1211). (4) Roots of certain other grasses from Central America, e.g., of the genus Epicampes (e.g., brush root, or zacaton). (5) Gomuti fibre, obtained from plants of the genus Arenga saccharifera or pinnata. (6) Istle, or ixtle (Tampico, fibre of Tampico or Mexican fibre), consisting of fibres, including short stiff fibres, obtained from a short-leaved Mexican agave. All these materials are classified in this heading whether or not cut, bleached, dyed or combed (but not for spinning), and whether presented in hanks, bundles or in bulk. The heading does not, however, cover prepared knots or tufts of fibre ready for incorporation without division in brooms or brushes (or requiring only minor further working to prepare them for assembly). These fall in heading 9603 (see Note 3 to Chapter 96). (F) Other vegetable products. These products include: (1) Esparto, from esparto grass (Stipa tenacissima) and the grass Lygeum spartum, which grow in Africa and Spain. They are used mainly in the manufacture of

paper pulp, but are also used in the manufacture of cordage and nets, plaited articles such as mats, matting, baskets, footwear, etc., and as stuffing or padding for chairs and mattresses. Esparto is classified in this heading only as stems or leaves, raw, bleached or dyed; when flattened, crushed or combed, as a textile fibre, it is excluded (heading 5305). (2) Alfa grass, when not prepared for textile use. (3) Raw broom stems, broom being a leguminous plant the fibres of which are used in textile production; combed broom fibres, or tow, are excluded (heading 5303). (4) Loofah, also known as vegetable sponge, consisting of the cellular tissue of Luffa cylindrica. Sponges of animal origin are excluded (heading 0511). (5) Flour of corozo, of doum palm "nuts", of coconut shells or similar flour. (6) Lichens (other than lichens used for dyeing (see item (B) (7)), or for medicinal or ornamental purposes). Agar-agar, carrageenan and other natural mucilages and thickeners derived from vegetable materials are excluded (heading 1302). Seaweeds and other algae of heading 1212 and dead single-cell algae (heading 2102) are also excluded. (7) Teasels, including those prepared for finishing textiles but not otherwise worked. (8) So-called Japanese rice paper, obtained by cutting the pith of certain trees growing in the Far East. It is used for making artificial flowers, pictures, etc. Sheets of this paper are classified in this heading whether or not they have been calendered, and whether or not cut to rectangular (including square) shape. (9) Betel leaves, being the fresh green leaves of the climbing plant Piper betle L. Betel leaves are generally chewed after meals owing to their refreshing and stimulating properties. (10) Bark of the soap tree (soapbark or Panama bark) (Quillaia saponaria). (11) Berries or seeds of soapberry (soap nuts) (Sapindus mukorossi, S. trifoliatus, S. saponaria, S. marginatus, S. drummondii). The heading also covers vegetable materials (appropriate to this heading) in the form of layers on a backing of textile fabric, paper, etc., or placed between sheets of textile fabric, paper, etc., held together by stapling or simple stitching.

Notes

English text as published in Annex I to Regulation (EU) 2021/1832 (Combined Nomenclature). The EAEU tariff and the EU nomenclature copy these notes from the same convention. For a Russian declaration the binding version is the Russian one: Annex to Decision No 80 of the EEC Council of 14 September 2021.

1. This chapter does not cover the following products which are to be classified in Section XI: vegetable materials or fibres of vegetable materials of a kind used primarily in the manufacture of textiles, however prepared, or other vegetable materials which have undergone treatment so as to render them suitable for use only as textile materials.

2. Heading 1401 applies, inter alia, to bamboos (whether or not split, sawn lengthwise, cut to length, rounded at the ends, bleached, rendered non-inflammable, polished or dyed), split osier, reeds and the like, to rattan cores and to drawn or split rattans. The heading does not apply to chipwood (heading 4404).

3. Heading 1404 does not apply to wood wool (heading 4405) and prepared knots or tufts for broom or brush making (heading 9603).