JaxPort joins movement to weigh outbound containers

The Port of Jacksonville’s terminals are willing to use on-site scales to provide carriers with a certified container weight to meet a new maritime safety rule.    Add the Port of Jacksonville to the list of ports that now say they will support shippers in complying with a new International Maritime Organization (IMO) requirement to provide the ocean carrier with a certified container weight prior to vessel loading.
   As of July 1, shippers will be responsible for electronically providing a verified gross mass (VGM) for export cargo in order for containers to be hoisted on a ship.
   The requirement has caught many shippers off guard and created a great deal of confusion in the freight transportation system about how the weight is to be captured and transmitted, and who will bear the cost.
   Some shippers have balked at the available options pushed by the liner industry, saying that they will bear extra costs if they have to purchase scales or use third party facilities to weigh the entire loaded container or that it is inefficient to weigh the contents and packing materials separately, and add them to the tare weight listed on the container or on a carrier’s website. Ocean carriers have responded to earlier complaints about liability for the accuracy of the tare weight with promises to add language to their tariffs indemnifying customers from liability for damages resulting from inaccurate carrier-provided container tare weights.
   Most U.S. marine terminals initially said they would not accept containers at their gates without the VGM on file, but following a U.S. Coast Guard declaration that existing procedures for weighing outbound boxes on port scales is consistent with the IMO’s directive, a series of ports in the past month have announced that they will continue to provide the weights to ocean containers. Still to be worked out are mechanisms for sharing the data with the shipper so it can be certified in accordance with the IMO requirement.
   The Jacksonville Port Authority on Monday issued a statement saying that private terminal operators at the facility are ready to provide shippers with the container weight information.
   It said ocean carriers should contact individual terminals to determine how the information exchange is to take place.
   The position is similar to one taken by Port Everglades in South Florida. Other ports in the Southeast are operated by port authorities, which are able to make direct policy changes because they manage the terminals themselves. The ports of Charleston, Savannah and Virginia were the first to break ranks and offer the weighing service to relieve shippers from the task.
   Still to be determined is whether the ocean carriers, represented by the Ocean Carrier Equipment Management Association, can reach a collective agreement with ports to standardize VGM weighing and data transmission so shippers, truckers and other parties aren’t faced with different requirements at each port.
   In related news, the British International Freight Association urged the freight forwarding community not to be complacent about the VGM rules even though the IMO recently issued a circular urging national authorities to be lenient in enforcing the rule during the first three months for shippers that have tried their best to comply.
   “The IMO circular advising administrations and port state control authorities to take a ‘practical and pragmatic approach’ in enforcing the new rules, for a period of three months immediately following 1 July 2016, should help ensure that containers that are loaded before that date, but transshipped on or after that date, reach their final port of discharge without a verified gross mass,” BIFA Director General Robert Keen said in a statement.
 “It also provides some flexibility, helping all the stakeholders in containerized transport to refine procedures for documenting, communicating and sharing electronic verified gross mass data and going some way to allaying industry fears that the impending rules might trigger big delays at ports,” he added.