According to Shipping Australia CEO Llew Russell, some exporters are not meeting legislative requirements in New South Wales to accurately declare container weights prior to shipment.
He says that Shipping Australia members have their suspicions that exporters are misdeclaring the actual cargo and packing weight in containers, but this is only being discovered in isolated cases in overseas markets. “Carriers have to rely on the documented weight as most containers are not actually weighed during the through transport process. To weigh all containers would seriously threaten our efforts to reduce congestion at the sea/land interface in our ports,” he says.In line with other States, the NSW government recently passed the Chain-of-Responsibility legislation, an Act that provides serious penalties for non-compliance, especially for repeat offenders.
Russell pointed out that whilst not bothering to accurately declare the weight of everything in a container by a few tonnes may not seem such a big deal for the individual shipper, it can mean an unsafe sized truck is sent to collect it, and it can result in instability on a large container vessel if loading a thousand containers that actually weigh 3,000 tonnes more than the weight indicated on the documents – and some could be located high above the deck.
“Shipping Australia will be bringing this matter to the attention of the Roads & Traffic Authority in NSW to see what action can be taken, perhaps on a random audit basis to check actual container weights,” said Russell.
“Interestingly, right at the beginning of the debate on the model for the NSW legislation, Shipping Australia had been advising the then National Road Transport Commission that the new legislation should focus on consignees and consignors, as they were primarily or ultimately responsible for the overloading or misdeclaration of container weights,” he concluded.
