Industry advocates call for container weight regulations to be clarified on national level

European terminal operators say they want implementation guidelines for the new IMO rules requiring shippers to provide the verified gross mass of containers that “do not create competitive distortions between member states.”    Terminal operators and shippers are continuing to express concern about a lack of clarity on how individual countries are going to implement the new International Maritime Organization rules requiring shippers to provide the verified gross mass (VGM) of containers prior to their being loaded.
   The IMO’s Maritime Safety Committee adopted the container weight requirement in November 2014 as an amendment to the international Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) treaty. It goes into effect on July 1, 2016.
   The Brussels-based Federation of European Private Port Operators (FEPORT) said Tuesday there is still a need for “clarity on implementation of SOLAS weighing rules at national levels.”
   “Within less than six months, new SOLAS container weighing rules will come into force and there is still a lack of information and harmonization at national level regarding their implementation,” said FEPORT, saying there is a need for “national authorities to develop guidelines that protect the efficiency of the logistics chain and do not create competitive distortions between member states.”
   “As of now, industry actors have released guidelines on the implementation of SOLAS requirement, but guidance from national authorities is still absent in many cases” said Jasper Nagtegaal, chairman of FEPORT’s customs and logistics committee. “A lack of national guidelines will ultimately lead to confusion in implementation and will have an adverse impact on operations and lead to possible competitive distortion.”
   FEPORT said it “strongly encourages member states, if they have not already done so, to draft guidelines which adopts a pragmatic approach and do not lead to competition distortion between member states.”
   Sarah Janaro, a public affairs officer at the U.S. Coast Guard, said Tuesday that verified gross mass regulations are “still under review” as well as “how we are implementing it.”
   She said the regulations will be posted on the Coast Guard’s “Maritime Commons” blog.
   Donna Lemm, vice president of global sales at Mallory Alexander and the chair of working committee on the container weight issue for the Agriculture Transportation Committee and Transpacific Stabilization Agreement, said shippers remain concerned about the implementation of the regulation because it may create an administrative burden and more congestion.
   “We are appealing to the ocean carrier community to work with us as stakeholders for common sense best practices,” she said, noting the United Kingdom’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency has published a document, “Guidelines regarding the verified gross mass of a container carrying cargo.”
   Lemm expressed concern that without U.S. Coast Guard saying how it will enforce the VGM requirement, shipping companies or electronic portals such as INTTRA, which last year set up an “eVGM” initiative to develop a technology standard and standard business process for digital documentation of VGM submissions, may have to rely on regulations of foreign countries when developing those standards and processes, and that this could put U.S. exporters at a disadvantage.
   She says a Coast Guard enforcement policy should recognize the need for a variance in VGM since agricultural commodities may change weight, for example, because of fluctuating humidity, and that ocean carriers are stakeholders.
   Lemm believes permitting a weight variance of plus or minus five percent would make sense.
   She also explains, “In the way that SOLAS was written, they hold the shipper accountable for the tare weight of the containers, not just the contents of the container, which we report today. They want us to read the side of every container when we load.”
   She said shipping companies know the weight of each container that they own and lease and shippers currently provide the weight of the contents in the master bill of lading and in the Customs and Border Protection Automated Export System. According to Lemm, the shipping line should be able to help shippers meet the SOLAS requirement by adding the cargo weight shippers provide to the carrier with the tare weight they have on file for each container in order to comply with  the SOLAS requirement.