Under-declaration of container weights, or unsafe loading, has been responsible for many serious truck accidents, and was implicated in the sinking of the MSC Napoli in 2007.
A new UN code of practice, requiring container weights to be verified before shipping, will come into force in July 2016.
If the issue sounds dull and procedural, it is nothing of the kind. Under-declaration of container weights, or unsafe loading, has been responsible for many serious truck accidents, and was implicated in the sinking of the MSC Napoli in 2007.
Speakers at the recent Multimodal exhibition in Birmingham said better information about box contents could have averted a fire on board the MSC Flaminia (pictured) in 2012, which claimed three lives, as well as last year’s fire on the Maersk Kampala.
Peregrine Storrs-Fox, risk management director for the TT Club, said two-thirds of cargo claims could be attributed to poor container packing or misdeclaration of weight.
“Any one container can have a huge impact on lots of others in an 18,000teu ship. The potential for a massive incident is out there,” he said.
Alongside the major disasters that create global headlines, Mr Storrs-Fox pointed to many “low-level disruptions”, such as truck accidents caused by unstable loads, or train derailments resulting from overweight cargo falling through the bottom of containers.