Small Change, Big Impact: Get Ready For The SOLAS Container Weight Verification

Part 1 of 3 - Shippers

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has amended the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) Convention to require that a packed container's gross weight be verified before the container can be loaded on board a ship.

The new rule will come into force on 1 July 2016 and will apply globally.

In a series of three articles, Elizabeth Turnbull and Marcia Perucca look at the obligations placed on shippers, carriers and port terminals and how the industry is preparing for the change.

In this first article, they highlight the implications for shippers.

Background

With its 50-plus years of history, it is perhaps surprising that it is only this year that the container shipping industry will have a mandatory rule requiring the gross mass of a container to be verified before the container can be put on board a ship.

Inaccurately declared container weight can cause container stacks to collapse, presenting a risk of injury to personnel, damage to equipment and to the cargo. It has also been considered an aggravating factor in significant casualties.

The amendment to SOLAS Chapter VI requiring such verification, which will come into force on 1 July, was adopted in November 2014 after careful industry consultation by the maritime safety committee of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) and years of campaigning by a number of groups. With the new amendment, it is hoped that accurate gross weight of packed containers will help vessel operators make safe stowage decisions.

The new rule will affect all the parties involved in the supply chain, but it places the primary responsibility for obtaining the verified gross mass (VGM) of a packed container on the shipper.

In the guidelines published by the IMO, the shipper is defined as "a legal entity or person named on the bill of lading or sea waybill or equivalent multimodal transport document (eg 'through' bill of lading) as shipper and/ or who (or in whose name or on whose behalf) a contract of carriage has been concluded with a shipping company".

In practice, the shipper may be any of the following:

The beneficial cargo owner (i.e. the owner of the goods or the exporter); The non-vessel-operating common carrier; or Where cargo from various shippers is consolidated into a single container, the entity that consolidates the cargo (i.e. the "master loader"). The requirements

i. With less than 3 months to go, the first thing that a shipper will have to decide is which method will be...