FREIGHT & TRADING WEEKLY
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FRIDAY 5 March 2010 NO. 1900
The Freight Community’s Weekly Newspaper for Import / Export decision makers – on subscription
Weight misdeclarers beware! Workable solution in the pipeline to check container weights By Alan Peat A call to ‘name and shame’ those who misdeclare container weights has drawn mixed response from the industry. It’s an idea mooted in the UK freight trade press calling for box lines and port operators to publicly name the excessive overweight offenders – with the expectation that this will cure the problem. The freight industry is utterly dependent on the honesty of the shippers – and their associated container packers/operators/forwarders. The weights declared by shippers on the shipping instruction (SI) and the bill of lading (BoL) are the only indications of just how much a container should weigh. But that’s not a very certain document. As a recent report by the UK’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB)
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said: “Only in container shipping is the weight of the cargo unknown. “This because many shippers either don’t have the facilities to weigh containers before shipment, or because they’re discouraged from doing so by factors such as import taxes, loading restrictions, and rail and road weight restrictions.” So they leave lots of room for errors – either deliberate, or more likely miscalculation error. But this “unknown” quantity has not always been the case in SA. A shipping line executive pointed out to FTW that there used to be weighbridges at each of the ports around the coast, intended to weigh all the trucks and container loads before they entered the terminals. Indeed, about seven years ago, the grand new weighbridge facility intended
for the Durban container terminal (DCT) on the Bayhead Road access was big news in FTW. But that, along with all the other port weighbridges, has – like many of the other great government ideas – just faded into oblivion. But it’s not an idea that has faded out of the minds of those in the shipping line and trucking industries who are the ultimate victims of misdeclaration of container weights. Alex de Bruyn, Safmarine SA trades executive, told FTW that he saw the weighbridge idea as one of the possible solutions. He suggested introducing measures in ports – similar to those in North America – which allow shipping lines to identify overweight containers before they go into the stack. “This could be done by having weighbridges at the To page 8
Carl van der Westhuizen ... ‘New contender is necessary.’
Former MBG director speaks out “I am absolutely flabbergasted industry did not really support this venture because it needs a new contender given the chaos we now have with short-shipments, but shippers were concerned
at the unavailability of equipment (at MBG Shipping), so one has to understand their reticence,” said Carl van der Westhuizen, former partner in MBG Shipping Line. See full story on page 5.