Feature: Cargo Integrity – A Unifi ed Approach
24 | Seaways | August 2019 Read Seaways online at http://www.nautinst.org/seaways
A new campaign by the cargo handling and container transport industry highlights issues that
undermine safety in the intermodal supply chain to improve safety for people, ships and the
environment.
Cargo integrity –
a unifi ed approach
T
he Campaign for Cargo Integrity focuses on the need for
all direct and indirect stakeholders to recognise each other’s
priorities to improve all aspects of supply chain performance
and enhance safety. This is a diverse project seeking, at its
roots, signifi cant cultural/behavioural change. Certain elements may
require legislative change and technology deployment, but much
concerns the perception of risk.
TT Club records indicate that up to 66% of incidents related to
cargo damage in the intermodal supply chain can be attributed to
poor practice in the overall packing process. This includes not just
load distribution and cargo securing, but also the workfl ow from cargo
classifi cation and documentation right through to declaration and
effective data transfer. Critically, many of these attritional incidents
could be avoided. Together, they are calculated to cost insurers more
than $500 million each year, resulting in a probable economic loss to
the industry of at least $6 billion annually.
Unitised fi res
At the tip of the iceberg, for example, there are weekly reports of
unitised fi res. Recent experience is that on average there is a major ship
fi re every 60 days resulting in potential loss of life, damage to the ship
and cargo, environmental harm, and supply chain disruption.
In the fi rst three months of 2019 signifi cant fi res occurred on no
fewer than four container ships: Yantian Express, APL Vancouver,
Grande America and ER Kobe. While it is not yet known what caused
these fi res, it is widely suspected that the fi res started in containers with
undeclared or misdeclared dangerous goods.
There have been several well publicised shipboard explosions and
fi res involving laden containers over the past few years. The tragedies
of MSC Flaminia in July 2012 and Maersk Honam in March 2018
both cost multiple lives, and resulted in insured losses in the hundreds
of millions of dollars and overall economic loss to the industry of
multiples of the insured element.
Scale of the problem
As the size of containerships increases, so does the potential risk and
consequence of a large explosion or fi re incident. Despite certain
regulatory and technical advances, there is little doubt that the
capability to respond to a cargo-related fi re at sea has not progressed
in proportion to ship capacities and the variety of commodities being
carried. In addition, complex practices in the global intermodal supply
chain may detract from safety and certainty of outcome.
All types of cargo can be mishandled. However, wrongly classifi ed,
declared or labelled dangerous goods are seen as the primary hazard.
ICHCA International, the representative body of cargo handling and
container terminal operators, calculated that 10% of an estimated 60
million packed containers transported around the globe each year are
declared to contain dangerous goods. That is six million containers
that need varying degrees of special handling, positioning in terminals
and stowage on-board ships. Information from government inspections,
which are biased towards declared dangerous goods shipments, suggests
that more than 20% of these shipments are poorly packed or incorrectly
identifi ed in some way. That means 1.3 million potentially unstable
declared dangerous goods loads per year. And that’s just declared
dangerous cargoes. It is more challenging to estimate the amount of
dangerous cargo that goes undeclared.Misdeclaration
An initiative by Hapag-Lloyd, now being further developed by IBM,
uses a screening system called Cargo Patrol to attempt to identify
cargoes that may be undeclared dangerous goods when a shipper
books the move with a shipping line. Flagged bookings will result in
more detailed investigation before acceptance. From the number of
‘potential hits’ thrown up by the system, it would seem that between
two and fi ve percent of bookings are likely to be undeclared dangerous
goods shipments. Extrapolating these fi ndings across the total annual
global container trade suggests that there are some 150,000 containers
each year carrying potentially volatile undeclared or mis-declared
cargo.Improving the inspection regime
Part of the Cargo Integrity campaign developed by ICHCA and the TT
Club focusses on IMO inspection programmes for Cargo Transport
Units (CTU)/containers. It has been admitted that the level of
reporting through these programmes is not suffi cient to draw concrete
conclusions, improve compliance or increase safety. Over more than
a decade, the volume of inspection results is far from compelling,
and few countries have submitted data. According to an IMO report,
these inspections are slanted towards declared dangerous goods
consignments, the majority of them undertaken by the US. Even so,
worrying defi ciencies are discovered each year.
Of 79,780 units inspected in 2017 (the latest year for which data is
available), 52% of all defi ciencies involved placarding and marking of
containers, while 9% related to the marking and labelling of packages,
according to fi lings to the IMO.Peregrine Storrs-Fox
Risk Management Director, TT Club