A SEMINAR has heard that shippers could be required by law within three years to verify the weight of containers before they are loaded on board a ship.
Deadline looms for declaration of correct box weights, seminar told
A SEMINAR has heard that shippers could be required by law within three years to verify the weight of containers before they are loaded on board a ship.
Richard Marks, director of the International Cargo Handling Coordination Association (ICHCA), reminded delegates attending the Multimodal 2013 exhibition in Birmingham, UK that the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) would consider the amendment in September this year and would probably adopt it in December 2014, leading to an entry into force in July 2016.
"Where can we do this in the transport chain?" he asked. The verified weight would need to be stated in the shipping document, though the fact that this was prepared before the vessel was loaded may raise practical difficulties. Furthermore, he said weighing containers at the gatehouse on entry to the port was difficult and expensive, and could impact especially on just-in-time deliveries.
Verifying weight on the lifting equipment itself was not guaranteed to be accurate, and self-geared ships often served terminals without dedicated equipment, he pointed out.
Delegates were told that when the MSC Napoli ran aground off the UK's south coast in January 2007, 137 out of the 600 containers it was carrying on deck were at least 10 per cent heavier or lighter than was declared on the ship's manifest. In another high-profile accident, the capsizing of the Xpress Container Line vessel Deneb during unloading at Algeciras in June 2011, an even higher percentage of boxes - 64 out of 150 - were not laden as recorded.
"The tendency is to assume that the weight on the booking form is the actual weight - this must account for a large proportion of mis-declarations. There's human error as well," Mr Marks said. The degree of "variation," as he described it - error ratios of 22 per cent in the case of the Napoli and 42 per cent for the Deneb - were no surprise.
Parties to the Safety of Life at Sea convention agreed an amendment in September 2012 stipulating that a container should either be weighed in its entirety, or its contents weighed separately and added to the tare weight of the box.
Robert Windsor, manager of trade services at the British International Freight Association (BIFA), said everyone in the supply chain had obligations and responsibilities, but if one person got it wrong, there were likely consequences for all the rest. "We must prevent bottlenecks in the supply chain," he stressed.
Forwarders loaded many sea freight containers but operated differently according to whether they were acting as agent, consolidator, intermediary or loader, Mr Windsor said. He believed most BIFA members would prefer aggregating weights of cargoes rather than weighing laden boxes, and was pleased that this seemed to be acceptable to the IMO.
