Industry fears, law on container weight verification could bring cargo chaos

Delivery services, freight forwarders, and vessel stations immediately want to start considerations over the facts of carrying out the new negotiations of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) on vessel weights. That was one of the main decision of International Cargo Handling Coordination Association (ICHCA) meeting on Friday in London on vessel weighing, with some agents warning that the regulation, due on 1 July 2016, could lead to disorder.

The new necessities, legally an improvement of the  present Safety of Life at Sea rules of the International Maritime Organization, have been planned to decrease the accidents caused internationally by containers whose mass or weight have been unopened by transporters and agents. The present regulation declares they must confirm the load stated on the bill of lading.

It has been analyzed as hard to carry out, while several sea cargo customers are supposed to be fully unconscious of the law. From next summertime, transporters will have to verify the weight of their container ships through two ways:  first way is to weigh up the laden container and the second way is weigh up the freight and calculating the tare weight of the container.

ICHCA technical consultant Richard Brough stated that there is no concession from weighing in some procedure, if the client is a shipper of the second method, then he will still have to calculate the freight, the calculation phase arises from addition the load weight with the tare weight of the container.

The World Shipping Council (WSC) and the Washington-based liner shipping lobby group was one of the followers of the new regulation. It initially contended on the first method, but subsequently agreed to the transporter point of sight, which was addressed by the Global Shippers Forum, that the second method would offer the similar level of promise to container controllers, finally be answerable for accepting or refusing containers waiting to be loaded.

However, it will carry on to nationwide jurisdictions to choose if they will agree on both ways, and senior vice president of the World Shipping Council (WSC) Lars Kjaer stated that the US had at present decided it will merely agree to admit the first method as evidence of the verified gross mass (VGM) of a container.

As a comparison, the enforcement body of UK, the Maritime & Coastguard Agency (MCA), has stated that it will agree with the second  method, and has initiated increasing an accreditation scheme for UK transporters in show with the Freight Transport Association (FTA).