Volza, Bilvio and trade-data tools vs public-procurement evidence: why customs data goes dark inside the EU

Trade-data tools turn customs declarations and bills of lading into searchable lists of who imported what from whom. For a manufacturer who wants to know which French company buys German office chairs, they look like the obvious answer. They are not, for a reason that has nothing to do with the tools.

Putting it simply: Customs-based trade data exists where a customs declaration exists. Between EU member states there are no customs duties, no customs checks and no customs declarations; intra-EU trade is measured through Intrastat, a statistical survey of VAT-registered traders, and Eurostat publishes the results by product and partner country, never by company. So no bill-of-lading tool can show you that a French distributor buys from a German maker. For evidence of who sells your category inside the EU, the public record that does name companies is the contract award notice.

Disclosure: Cresques is our own product. We compare on criteria you can check yourself and link to each source.

What trade-data tools actually hold

The raw material is a customs record: a declaration filed when goods cross a customs border, or a carrier's bill of lading. Some countries make these available at shipment level — in the United States, for example, accredited press may copy the data on inbound sea-cargo manifests unless the importer has asked for its name to be kept confidential (19 CFR 103.31) — and the tools collect, clean and index them. A good record shows product (HS code), quantity, value, date and the names of consignor and consignee. Where such records exist, the evidence is excellent.

The tools themselves are candid about the limits. Volza, by its own figures, covers about 200 countries in tiers: detailed data with both buyer and supplier names for some 50 countries, one-side data for a handful, and mirror data with partial coverage for most of the rest (its published counts change from page to page). Mirror data means a country's trade is reconstructed from the records of its trading partners, not from its own declarations.

Why there is no customs record for a shipment from Hamburg to Lyon

The European Commission puts it in one sentence: "no customs duties are levied at the borders between EU countries", and once goods are in the Union "no more customs duties are due, and no more customs checks are conducted — all goods circulate freely within the EU". Access2Markets, the Commission's trade portal, says the same from the importer's side: goods that have been legally imported "can circulate throughout the EU with no further customs checks".

No border formality, no declaration. That is why the statistical system changed in 1993. Eurostat's glossary defines Intrastat as "the data collection system for compiling statistics on international trade in goods between the European Union (EU) Member States", established on 1 January 1993 because the removal of customs procedures between member states eliminated the traditional source of trade statistics. Data are "directly collected from intra-EU trade operators once a month" and the system is linked to VAT. For trade with non-EU countries, by contrast, Eurostat's metadata states that "Extrastat data on trade in goods with non-EU countries are collected by customs authorities and are based on the records of trade transactions in customs declarations".

What does Eurostat publish from Intrastat? Aggregates — detailed data are disseminated at "eight-digit CN subheadings by partner country". Confidentiality follows the principle of passive confidentiality set out in the EU legislation on trade statistics: a national statistical authority "has to take appropriate measures only if requested to do so by companies which feel that their interests would be harmed by publication", and where granted, the trade is hidden at the detailed level. There is no company-level publication to be confidential about: Intrastat returns are statistical declarations, not trade documents, and they are not released.

The consequence for a manufacturer is simple. A German maker's shipment to a French distributor generates an Intrastat line in Germany and one in France, both of which disappear into a product-by-country total. No tool can index what is never published.

What mirror data can and cannot do

Mirror data is honest and useful for extra-EU flows: a Turkish manufacturer's exports to Germany may appear in records from the Turkish side, with the German importer named. But two EU companies trading with each other produce no customs record on either side, so there is nothing to mirror. Before buying a plan for an EU market, check which tier that country sits in on the vendor's own coverage page and ask whether its records include intra-EU purchases. As of October 2026, the Commission and Eurostat sources above say they cannot.

The tools, as they describe themselves

All descriptions below are from each vendor's own website in October 2026. Where a price is not shown publicly we say so.

These are capable products for extra-EU work — importers in the United States, India or Latin America, price benchmarks, a competitor's export volumes. None changes the fact that intra-EU trade produces no shipment-level record.

The public record that does name companies inside the EU

One official EU source names a company, a product category, a customer and a date, and it exists because of a legal duty rather than a border. Every working day TED, the Supplement to the Official Journal of the EU, publishes more than 3,000 procurement notices from the EU, the EEA and beyond, free of charge. When a public buyer concludes a contract above the EU thresholds it must publish an award notice naming the winner, its address, whether it is an SME, the value and the CPV codes (Directive 2014/24/EU, Article 50 and Annex V Part D).

An award notice is not a shipment: it does not show from whom the winner bought its stock or at what price. It shows that a named company supplied a specific category to a real buyer — the fact a manufacturer needs when asking who already sells its category in a country.

Cresques is built on the right-hand column: you create a market as a country plus CPV categories, each company is tied to a notice you can open, and the lawful first-contact channel is shown per country. Company profiles with an AI-researched role and first messages drafted in the local language are live; e-mail alerts on new awards come with paid plans. The blind spot is shared: a distributor that buys only from EU suppliers and sells only to private hospitals or retail chains appears in neither source.

What this means for a manufacturer

• Buy trade data for markets with published customs records; it cannot show intra-EU buyer–seller pairs, because the records do not exist.
• Check a vendor's own coverage tier for your target country and ask about intra-EU flows before paying.
• Intrastat figures size a market by product and country; they never name a company.
• Inside the EU, the public document naming who sells your category is the award notice; its blind spot is private-sector-only distributors.
• Whatever the source, confirm each company in the business register and settle the lawful first contact before you write.