PRIVATE maritime mediator and arbitrator Ken McLean listed the consequences of bad container data, resulting in lost boxes, hazards to navigation, risks to crew, loss and damage to ships.
Mr McLean was speaking to a Liverpool conference of the Women's International Shipping & Trading Association (WISTA) called to discuss the problem of overweight containers.
But London Gateway commercial manager Chris Evans pointed to difficulties in weighting them in one place.
"In the end, trust is the foundation of trade. You cannot expect to weigh every single container in the same place, otherwise you get a bottleneck," said Mr Evans of the DP World organisation.
But Mr McLean said too often containers arrived for loading "half an hour before the ship is due to sail," and described sea conditions in which containers regularly could go over at a 30 degree angle.
He told of a fire aboard the 15,500-TEU Eugen Maersk, after encountering monsoon weather a year ago, which damaged containers and lashings. Fire in a container on the after deck damaged or destroyed 16 others.
It took some time to control the fire because the fire hoses could only tackle the outbreak up to the third tier of containers, which were stacked eight high.
The collapse of the container stack was a major contributing factor to the fire said the report by the Danish Marine Investigation Board. though it was uncertain whether acceptable load limits were exceeded.
Peel Ports sales chief Zara Giles said that from a port management perspective, "we would love all containers to be weighed the day they get to the port," she said.
Bill Brassington of ETS Consulting, who advises on safety and security in the freight supply chain, cited serious road accidents in Gloucester and in London on the same day involving "eccentric" container loads.
"Would weighing have made any difference? I suggest it would," he said.
When Mr Brassington had analysed the weight and stability of 125,000 containers ahead of the drafting of the IMO code, it appeared that five per cent were "dangerously eccentric", with weights of up to 80 tons.
"On the roads, it was very easy for a truck carrying a container to topple over some vehicles that were loaded in excess of their approved safe carrying weights," he said.
Weighing, as opposed to calculating, was the only way of obtaining the gross mass of a container, he said.
"Any calculation method has a degree of error. Whatever they weigh may become dry or wet, but with the right equipment weighing can be done and identify the exact centre of gravity," Mr Brassington said,
CONTAINER
01 July 2014 - 20:03
WISTA women in shipping discuss problems of container weigh-ins
PRIVATE maritime mediator and arbitrator Ken McLean listed the consequences of bad container data, resulting in lost boxes, hazards to navigation, risks to crew, loss and damage to ships.
CONTAINER
01 July 2014 - 20:03
WISTA women in shipping discuss problems of container weigh-ins
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