Three UK ports to offer container weighing service

Terminals at the ports of Felixstowe, Southampton and London Gateway in the United Kingdom will offer the service in advance of the SOLAS verified gross mass requirement due to be implemented July 1, 2016.    Three of the major seaports in the United Kingdom will begin offering a container weighing service in advance of an amendment to the International Maritime Organization’s Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) treaty.
   The amendment, enforcement of which has caused no small amount of consternation on the part of the shipping industry as a whole, will require shippers to accurately declare the verified gross mass (VGM) of a laden container before it is loaded on to a ship.
   The VGM requirement goes into effect July 1, 2016, but industry groups have been complaining rather loudly that there is no clear path to implementation of the rule. 
   The Port of Felixstowe, along with DP World’s container terminals at London Gateway and Southampton, appear to be the first ports worldwide to offer a container weighing service.
   Dubai-based terminal operator DP World said it would implement the service in response to what would otherwise be “a significant logistics barrier for UK exports.”
   “From our contacts with UK exporters, freight forwarders and shipping lines, it is clear that the industry is finding it challenging to provide the VGM of containers,” Ganesh Raj, senior vice president and managing director of DP World Europe & Russia, said in a statement. “This could become a significant logistics barrier for UK exports and world trade generally.”
   DP World said it consulted extensively with the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), the agency responsible for enforcement of the SOLAS regulations in order to “implement scalable solutions to weigh containers shortly after arrival in the port and provide the VGM.”
   “The weights determined in this way will be used for the stowage on the container ships and ensures that users of DP World container terminals in the UK do not need to provide the VGM for their export containers but will be able to use the weight provided by DP World for this purpose,” the company added. “It will still be possible for shippers to provide a certified VGM through electronic messaging prior to arrival at the port if preferred.”
   Port of Felixstowe Chief Operating Officer Stephen Abraham echoed those comments in a statement publicizing his port’s container weighing service.
   “We have met with many customers and from their feedback it is clear that there is still a lot of uncertainty amongst exporters about the new rules,” said Abraham. “The rules have the potential to cause significant disruption to export supply chains.”
   No such announcements have been made by the other container gateways in the United Kingdom, such as Tilbury, Liverpool or smaller regional ports, but analysts expect them to provide similar services in order to remain competitive in attracting international cargo business.
   In the United States, the Coast Guard said last week shippers should not expect any delays to enforcement of the new rules, nor should they look to the Coast Guard to enforce the mandate.