Integrated bakery machinery classified under bakery heading, not industrial oven, because its rolling and baking functions operated as one machine.

An imported automatic hollow wafer baking machine with an oven section, rolling section and take-off arms was classified as bakery machinery rather than an industrial oven. Its integrated functions showed that it was used in bakery production as a composite machine, not a mere oven performing only heat treatment. The Brussels Tariff Nomenclature Explanatory Notes were treated as having no statutory effect, and Chapter Note 5 of Chapter 84 was held inapplicable because the machine was not one of alternative uses but a single integrated bakery machine. Classification under Heading 84.30(1) was upheld, and Heading 84.14 was rejected.

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Issues: Whether the imported automatic hollow wafer baking machine, having an oven section and a rolling or transport section, was classifiable as an industrial oven under Heading 84.14 of the Customs Tariff Act, 1975 or as a bakery machine under Heading 84.30(1) of the Customs Tariff Act, 1975.

Analysis: The machine was found, on the catalogue and description of its working, to contain not merely a baking oven but also a rolling section and take-off arms for transporting the baked wafer sheets into the mechanical rolling section. It was therefore a machine used in bakery operations and not a mere oven performing only heat treatment. The reliance on Brussels Tariff Nomenclature Explanatory Notes was rejected as having no statutory effect, and Chapter Note 5 of Chapter 84 was held inapplicable because the machine was not one with alternative uses, but a single bakery machine performing integrated functions.

Conclusion: The machine was correctly classifiable under Heading 84.30(1) of the Customs Tariff Act, 1975 and not under Heading 84.14; the classification adopted by the customs authorities was upheld and the appeal failed.

Ratio Decidendi: A machine having an integrated baking and rolling mechanism used in bakery production is classifiable according to its composite commercial function under the tariff heading for bakery machinery, and not as a mere oven under the heading for industrial ovens.

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