FIATA and CLECAT OK Position Paper on Mandatory Container Weighing in Ports

The International Federation of Freight Forwarders Associations and the European Association for Forwarding, Transport, Logistics and Customs Services endorsed a joint position paper on mandating container weighing in ports, FIATA said. The organizations said in the paper that they have “considered with great interest” the recent debate on misdeclaration of weights in container transport. Some maritime interests, with the support of the Danish and Dutch governments, have called for the International Maritime Organization’s Safety of Life at Sea regulations to be changed to ensure that the actual weight of a loaded container is verified prior to vessel loading, but there's no consensus on that, they said. While FIATA and CLECAT don't oppose giving the issue some attention, “we are not convinced that a regulatory approach to making the verification of container weights mandatory will help increase safety in the supply chain substantially,” they said. The discussion is too focused on a relatively small risk instead of taking a wider look at the whole process of shipping containers, they said. The focus of those who started the debate should be on lashing the containers on the stack; carriers' maintenance procedures; and the fact that it's common practice that around 10% of all containers loaded on a ship will end up on a stack different than on the stowage plan, they said. FIATA and CLECAT questioned whether there's enough evidence about the scale and causes of misdeclared container weights to justify new rules. Weighing all containers “is neither practical nor desirable,” they said. At the conference, FIATA's Multimodal Transport Institute also approved a paper on transport emissions that will “catapult FIATA to the core of the political debate on sustainable logistics,” it said.