VGM container weight mis-declaration 'rampant at most ports', say forwarders
Container carriers are dealing with widespread weight mis-declarations by shippers, refuelling long-standing ship safety hazard ...
Asian exporters unprepared for SOLAS Verified Gross Mass (VGM) regulations could force carriers to blank sailings, while some shippers have hinted they will cheat on weight declarations.
A major east-west shipping line told The Loadstar a lack of shipper urgency on new container weight rules may ...
Comment on this article
Andy Lane
May 17, 2016 at 7:43 amI believe that IMO announced recently that the “soft start” to full VGM compliance was aimed solely at containers under transhipment. Whereby they would be permitted to continue their journey without a VGM, but that any container loading to the first vessel of an end-to-end routing would need to be 100% compliant.
The MSA guidelines are maybe not the best, but I am sure that carriers will further interpret them by not permitting loading of containers with VGM discrepancies in order not to delay the ship and the compliant containers.
The cost of weighing a packed container per method 1 is potentially no more expensive than weighing individual pieces of cargo and consolidating a vast quantity of these into a single VGM for transmission to the Line. A 5% discrepancy is indeed very generous.