Weight for Delays

There is just over a month to go before new safety regulation comes into effect that will mandate container weighing from 1 July, but at the eleventh hour there is still much confusion over how shippers and forwarders will be able to comply. 

Overweight containers have been cited as a contributing factor or cause of a number of maritime accidents, including the MSC Napoli grounding in 2007 and in November 2014 the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) adopted mandatory amendments to the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) that will require shippers (and forwarders too when they are named as the shipper on the bill of lading) to verify and provide their container’s verified gross mass weight (VGM) to the ocean carrier and port terminal prior to it being loaded onto a ship.

To verify the container’s gross weight shippers/forwarders will either have to weigh the loaded container itself or the component cargo items and add the tare mass of the container. If a packed container is received at a port facility for export without a verified gross weight, it shall not be loaded on a vessel until such verification is obtained.

However, as the countdown towards 1 July continues it is clear that many shippers and forwarders still do not know how to comply. 

Better information on compliance requirements and options is starting to be communicated but there is still a lack of standardisation and coordination. 

Complicating matters further the US Coast Guard recently said that existing US laws for providing the gross verified mass of containers were equivalent to the requirements in the amendments to SOLAS, but it’s unclear if one of the Coast Guard’s approved methods breaks the IMO’s standpoint that shippers have responsibility for providing the VGM.