An important revision was enforced in July 2008 in the "Customs Convention for Containers" (CCC), and in August 2010 in the "Istanbul Convention".

Through their modified Annexes (Annex 1of CCC, and Annex B3 ap. II of Istanbul Convention), these two conventions now stipulate that container prefixes have to be registered as per standard ISO 6346.
The standard ISO 6346 makes provision for the registration of the identification code of the owner or principal operator near BIC in order to internationally protect the unicity of this code.
Thus the obligation of the registration of this code with BIC, which was a normative recommendation, now becomes legally mandatory, and its effectiveness will be checked by the national customs administrations.
Default to this obligation will from now on be controlled by Customs, and containers which carry codes which will not meet this obligation will be subject to Customs stop and checking wich will hamper or even prevent the successful achievement of your transport operations, and may be refused the benefit of the temporary admission granted through these Conventions to containers used for international trade.
You may contact us to get more information on this new development.

Besides, please note that according to another revision of these annexes, the obligation to show the country of registration of the container, either in full or using the two letters alpha code provided for in ISO 3166, is withdrawn.