Hapag-Lloyd sees uptick in incorrectly declared dangerous goods

The German ocean carrier’s “Watchdog” software flagged more shipments both because of an increase in business and stricter regulations following the explosions in Port Tianjin last year.    Hapag-Lloyd said it saw many more incorrectly declared dangerous goods last year than in 2014.
   The German ocean carrier has special safety software called “Watchdog” developed by its information technology and dangerous goods experts to continuously check cargo data to identify dangerous goods.
   In 2015 it found 4,314 cases of incorrectly declared dangerous goods, a 65 percent increase over 2014. Hapag-Lloyd’s dangerous goods experts looked into more than 236,000 suspicious cases flagged up by the safety software in 2015, a 46 percent increase over the prior year.
   “Dangerous goods that are declared imprecisely, incorrectly, or not at all have the potential to pose a major risk to crews, ships, other cargo and the environment,” the carrier said in a statement.
   Ken Rohlmann, head of the dangerous goods (DG) department at Hapag-Lloyd, said the big uptick was the result of two factors: Hapag-Lloyd’s merger with CSAV’s container business, which increased its overall business; and the chemical explosion in the port of Tianjin in last August, after which many ports drastically tightened their dangerous goods guidelines or even prohibited dangerous goods from being processed at all.
   Hapag-Lloyd spokesman Rainer Horn explained that “many Chinese ports banned DG cargo partly or wholly after the explosions.So shippers didn’t declare their DG cargo hoping that they could get the cargo through.”
   He added this is not a new situation, that some deliberately don’t declare dangerous goods because they want to use all ports and carriers, even if they have restrictions and rules in place which would bar dangerous goods..
   The Wall Street Journal reported that a government investigation of the Tianjin explosion released last Friday found it was caused “when improperly stored chemicals self-ignited in the summer heat.”