Getting the message out on the CTU Code

Kitack Lim, secretary general of the IMO, said he had “no hesitation in commending the use of the CTU Code” and supported a recent seminar aimed at raising awareness of the Code and promoting its use.

Magda Kopczyncka, director of Waterborne Transport at the EC’s DG Move, added the Commission’s support for the campaign, noting that much still needs to be done to simplify the CTU Code’s language and to communicate its messages to all, especially those packing the units at the cargo’s point of origin.

At the seminar, TT Club’s risk management director, Peregrine Storrs-Fox emphasised the serious consequences resulting from badly packaged, eccentrically loaded and wrongly handled material.

“Stringent efforts by our group and many others to address, in part, these issues resulted last year in an amendment to the maritime safety convention, SOLAS making mandatory the weighing of every packaged container. Despite there being 166 signatory nations to this convention, evidence so far is that this legal requirement has made little impact on the problem of mis-declaration of the gross mass of packed containers. Where regulation fails, industry must come together to act in the interests of safety,” said Mr Storrs-Fox.