The event taking place on May 24 at the “PetroCongress” CC (St.Petersburg) was attended by executives and managers of the leading companies in container shipping business, and namely sea ports and terminals, shipping lines, transport and forwarding companies, dry terminals, and shippers.
Alexander Altshuller, the general director of MODUL Co.Ltd, mounted the Conference. He brought into focus the importance of accuracy, because the lightest misprint, not even a mistake might result in financial losses.
We should recall that the Conference was held due to the fact that IMO adopted mandatory Amendments to SOLAS about compulsory container weighting. The new rule comes into force from July 1, 2016. Hereby it is the responsibility of the shipper to verify the gross mass of the packed container and to ensure the data is correct.
Over 80 delegates of container shipping came from all over the country to take part in the conference. Reports were delivered by the leading industry experts.
Evgeny Karpovich, the Head of the load securement laboratory of the Central Scientific and Research Institute of Merchant Marine reminded about the background of the amendments. The matter of container weighting had been at first brought up after MV Rena incident, when examination revealed that transported boxes had overweight. He also elaborated on several new national and international projects in container shipping, told about changes in National Standard - GOST and about new version of the standard ISO3874. «This information is very actual today, when they started to transport a lot of bulk cargoes in containers».
The representatives of the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping, the Agency which is certified to act within the frames of the Resolution IMO MSC.380 (94) to determine the verified gross mass of a packed container, Alexander Fetisov and Sergey Zverev presented a report about certification procedure and package of necessary documents for companies, which decided to weight containers and to produce the VGM. As Mr.Fetisov mentioned 8 companies had already become certified and 40 more applications were then under consideration. The Certification fee is about 25 thous.rubles. The Agency will check container weighting stations every five years, with interim inspections set for 30 month.
The representatives of Maersk Line submitted a report «VGM from the standpoint of the line. Procedures and basic requirements. Relationship with customers and terminals». Vladimir Rodygin, the main technologist of Modul Co.Ltd developed a theme about types and features of container weighting equipment, and the specialist of Solvo told about automation of processes to generate and communicate the VGM of packed containers between all the parties involved into transportation.