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FRIDAY 29 May 2009 NO. 1864
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The Freight Community’s Weekly Newspaper for Import / Export decision makers – on subscription
Weight misdeclaration remains a thorny issue for carriers By Alan Peat Shipping lines are continuing to battle the perennial problem of misdeclaration of container weights – a problem that disrupts ships’ stowage plans and could ultimately threaten the vessel’s safety. And it’s an issue that was highlighted for the SA shipping industry in more recent times
with the grounding of the fully container-laden MSC Napoli, a ship bound for SA when hull damage threatened her safety in heavy seas off the south-east coast of England. At the time, Christine Barringer, head of the transportation section at the UK’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said there were a “shocking” number of
R36m bonanza for Ngqura By Ed Richardson The port of Ngqura last Friday took delivery of two R36-million rail-mounted cranes that will transfer containers between road vehicles and rail trucks in the harbour’s rail terminal. “Due to the immense size of the cranes and the fact that they are being delivered virtually assembled, it would have been physically impossible to land at the neighbouring Port
Elizabeth harbour and deliver overland. With equipment of this nature, it can only be landed at the terminal at which it will be installed and used,” said business unit executive at Ngqura container terminal, Hector Danisa. The 720 ton and 3 2616 m3 consignment included two fully erect rail-mounted gantry cranes weighing 660 tons in total, as well as small assembly parts, tools, consumables and breakbulk cargo.
The Zhen Hua No 21 delivering two rail-mounted cranes for the Ngqura container depot. Behind it are four of the six ship to shore gantries that will be operational in the port of Ngqura by October this year.
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misdeclared containers. “Of the ones they were able to weigh, 20% were more than three tonnes different from their declared weight. The largest single difference was 20-t and the total weight of 137 containers was 312-t heavier than on the manifest.” The only answer, according to some of the lines, was to introduce a misdeclaration
penalty fee – hoping that this would force shippers to focus on declaring correct container weights. And the problem that has to be highlighted, according to David Williams, SA MD of Maersk Line, is that it’s mostly an accidental mistake, the result of human failure, rather than a deliberate attempt to save money on freight costs.
“It’s almost always an error in the paperwork,” he told FTW, “rather than deliberate malfeasance. At about the time, but not because of, the Napoli incident, MSC introduced a misdeclaration penalty charge applied in two cases. One where the client exceeds the plate weight of the container, To page 12