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Issue 8 2013 Freight Business Journal


///SAFE PACKING Packing – there is no safety in numbers


Poor or incorrect packing has always been an issue in the freight industry. But with ever-bigger ships and much tougher legislation, the margins for error are tighter than they have ever been. Chris Lewis reports from a recent conference on new guidelines.


About 20 years ago, TT Club – insurers to the multimodal freight industry – produced a DVD entitled ‘Any fool can stuff a container’. Actually, it set out to prove that any fool couldn’t, at least not properly and safely, and since then there has been no shortage of guides and information explaining how to do it correctly. For those with the time and inclination to delve deeper into the subject, there is also the ‘Blue Book’, the current IMO/ILO/UN guidelines, which has also spawned a much larger loose- leaf appendix. So the problem of poor packing


of intermodal transport units has been around for a very long time, probably since the dawn of the container age. What has changed, as TT


Club’s risk management director Peregrine Storrs-Fox told a seminar on the subject organised by ICHCA International in London on 22 October,


is that containerships


have grown massively. So if something is wrong with the packing in one container leading to, say, a fire breaking out, it could potentially affect 18,000teu-worth of other boxes on board the same ship. Quite apart from the threat to human life, a ship and its cargo could potentially be worth $3 billion these days. And consider what could


happen if one of these giant ships – 23 containers wide with boxes


stacked ten-high on deck – rolls by 25 or 30 degrees in a typical gale. If even a small proportion of the cargoes are rolling around inside their boxes, that could have catastrophic effects on its stability. There is also the problem that


nowadays much larger objects get carried in containers, such as heavy steel coils. If one of those isn’t properly secured and breaks through the container floor it could derail a train or turn a truck over. Poor packing and resulting shiſting of cargo could well be a factor in the 18,000 ‘straight line’ truck accidents that occur in the US every year – that is, accidents that occur to a truck without the intervention of another vehicle, for example turning over on bends. Storrs-Fox estimates that one


in three containers being shipped around the world has a packing problem of some sort. Many of these will be of concern only to the consignee, who stands to receive goods in less-than-perfect condition, but a proportion could have more serious consequences if they result in leaking dangerous goods or heavy items shiſting in transit. Despite this, the number of


inspections for badly packed goods is currently quite minimal, he says. Fewer than 5% of countries report any inspections to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) and even


GO EASY ON THE GAS


The inside of a shipping container can be a dangerous place, says ETS Consulting’s Bill Brassington. Sometimes an attempt to solve one problem can cause other, arguably more serious ones. All wood used in packing and dunnage should be properly fumigated before use, to avoid importing unwanted insects. But some shippers try to take a short cut by tossing in powerful fumigation ‘bombs’ aſter the container has been loaded. This then creates far more gas than is needed – to the extent that container unpackers have sometimes been overcome by the fumes. It goes without saying that containers should be carefully inspected before being accepted from the shipping line. As well as moths, creepy-crawlies and other unwanted guests from the animal kingdom, it’s important to ensure that the outside is clean too. And shippers should also make sure that no bugs, rats or nasties take up residence while the container is in their possession.


there the target is oſten only mis- declared or undeclared dangerous goods. However, a new organisation,


the Cargo Information Notification System, operated by the container lines and now covering 60% of the world’s trade, is stepping up its efforts to find problems in the supply chain. What CINS has revealed, so far, is that 25% of problems involve poor packing and a further 6% incorrect packing. Reliable statistics are impossible to find, but it seems likely that the the incidence of packing problems is thus much higher than that of overweight containers, which has lately received a lot of attention recently. (See FBJ 7 2013, page 1-2) Now, though, container packing


will receive the attention that many people feel it deserves. The IMO, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the United National Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) are poised to finalise a new Code of Practice for Packing of Cargo Transport Units in early November. This will supersede the existing ‘Blue Book’, explains owner of ETS Consulting, Bill Brassington. The latter, though a worthy effort, was not widely used and indeed many people involved in shipping and transport are totally unaware of its existence. There were also some serious question marks over its readability and, indeed, comprehensibility. ILO technical expert Frank Leys pointed out that the old code was rarely if ever read by the packers themselves. The hope is that the new


guidelines will be easy to use and understand and will be comprehensively disseminated through all the electronic means now available. It could also be used as the model for new national legislation on packing in many countries. Even if this isn’t the case, under UK law at least, anyone who chose to ignore the code would find that it counted against them should there be an accident and the case came to court. It will also be included in the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) convention. The draſt of the new code


should be agreed by May 2014 and publication is expected around 12-


18 months aſter that, Brassington told the conference. Chris Welsh, as


general


secretary of the Global Shippers’ Forum, has also reviewed the existing guidelines as part of the process of drawing up the new ones. “What we didn’t want was a very complex new regulation – most of the knowledge is already there in the form of shipping line and shipper best practices,” he said. Don Armour, policy manager at the Freight Transport Association, pointed out that his organisation already produced many easy to understand guides for its members. One other factor that may be


contributing to the increased number of packing incidents is the disappearance of the full-time, professional shipping manager from most companies. But there is also a lack of knowledge throughout the supply chain – even shipping lines’ don’t necessarily have a very detailed level of knowledge. Another very probable cause


is the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ mentality that containerisation engenders. Even if the culprit box can be identified, it can still be very hard to prove who was responsible for allowing the cargo to get into a dangerous state. The myriad amount of subcontracting that takes place today, involving


shippers, carriers, forwarders, third party logistics companies and specialist packers can make it hard to identify who is responsible for what. “But it’s important not to descend into the blame game,” said Chris Welsh. “This isn’t one person’s problem – it’s a supply chain problem.” Don Armour of the FTA also


pointed out that many companies also instructed their drivers not to accept unsafely loaded trailers – but if they pick up one already sealed with the doors shut, how are they supposed to tell? It’s one of the quandaries of the modern freight industry, where all sorts of potential problems can be hidden away behind curtainsides or in steel containers. Later discussions at the ICHCA


conference centred on how to get the information contained in the new code out to the sharp end of the freight industry – to the people that are physically loading containers. Small laminated cards giving information on a ‘need to know’ basis – without the complex calculations found in the main code itself - are one possible answer, although others suggested that a mobile phone ‘app’ as a more modern and effective medium. One issue will be how to translate the quite complex theory in the guidelines into practical rules “that the guy putting cargo into


the container can understand,” as Cordstrap senior advisor David Parris said. The plan is for the IMO to


publish the hard copy of the code, but it will also be available free on the UNECE website. A picture is worth a thousand and


words, one conference


delegate suggested that videos or even simulators might be a more effective way of getting across the message about the importance of packing, rather than words in booklets or websites. When the code is finalised, Exis


Technologies will also develop computerised training for packers, building on its experience in developing online dangerous goods packages. Foreign language translations will be important, including those for China, the Indian subcontinent and possibly the Arab world as well as the main European tongues. Bear in mind that most container packing, and a large percentage of the problems, happen in the developing world. But, whatever the medium


chosen, the effort to improve packing


standards should not


stop with the creation of the new guidelines, insisted TT’s Peregrine Storrs-Fox. “Spreading the word is just as important as the new guidelines themselves,” he declared.


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