What\u2019s the difference between calcium hypochlorite and \u2018water purifying equipment\u2019? Or between ammonium nitrate and \u2018plant growth regulator\u2019? Nothing, most likely. <\/p>\n
Misdeclaring dangerous cargoes appears to be something of an art for many shippers who are, it is assumed, anxious to avoid the paperwork, restrictions, regulations and\/or costs involved in shipping extremely hazardous goods.<\/p>\n
The results can be devastating, as evidenced in an alarming number of container ship fires \u2013 at sea and in port \u2013 that have been put down to mis-declared cargoes.<\/p>\n
Shipping lines and other stakeholders are attempting to fight back. But while it would seem to be common sense to take collective action on an issue that threatens safety, lives and environmental damage, such an approach can be hampered by anti-trust and competition rules.<\/p>\n
To put the issue into perspective, using its Cargo Patrol system, set up to scan bookings to detect undeclared dangerous or suspicious items, Hapag-Lloyd identified 370,000
suspicious bookings in 2018.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf these, we investigated 290,000 in depth and at the end of the day we had 4,000 bookings where we have proof that the cargo was mis-declared, not declared or wrongly declared,\u201d says Ken Rohlmann, the line\u2019s senior director, dangerous goods.<\/p>\n
That figure means far more than 4,000 containers, as one booking can be for multiple boxes. In the first quarter of 2019, Hapag-Lloyd\u2019s investigations identified 900 such mis-declared bookings.<\/p>\n
Cargo Patrol scans bookings for 7,000 key words and search terms that give reason for suspicion. \u201cThere are some chemicals or some chemical formulae or words where you could try to hide the real content of container \u2013 which could be acid or explosive. Some people put the chemical formula and avoid the actual word for the cargo they are carrying,\u201d says Nils Haupt, Hapag-Lloyd senior director, corporate communications. \u201cThis has been going on for quite a while. There are really thousands of containers that are mis-declared, either intentionally or by chance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hapag-Lloyd estimates that 0.06% of containers worldwide are carrying undeclared dangerous goods. \u201cIf you just look at Singapore, that would amount to 18,000 containers a year,\u201d says Mr Haupt.<\/p>\n
What happens when the system finds a rogue box or boxes? Mr Rohlmann says, \u201cWe don\u2019t load them. If we get an alert from the system, we put the container on hold. We contact the customer and ask why they didn\u2019t declare the cargo.\u201d<\/p>\n
But what happens next is hugely frustrating. The shipper can simply book the same \u2018harmless\u2019 container with the next shipping line.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do report undeclared shipments that we find to the CINS (Cargo Incident Notification System),\u201d he says. \u201cBut unfortunately, we are not legally allowed to name and blame. We can only describe the cargo, port of loading and planned port of discharge. At that state we don\u2019t necessarily have a container number and we are not allowed to name the problem shipper.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is down to multinational anti-trust restrictions, he explains: \u201cBut if we have proof that someone has cheated on us and is putting our people at risk and risking damage to the
environment, we should be allowed to talk about this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mistakes can be made, of course, but it\u2019s the deliberate cases that really scare him. \u201cThey deliver manipulated documents and manipulated safety data. This represents a risk for everyone dealing with the box \u2013 truckers, inspection officers, those securing cargo, with all assuming it is a harmless cargo when it is toxic. If you don\u2019t know what is in the box, it is a potential risk. For example, if there was a fire on the terminal, there are some chemical commodities for which contact with water is dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n
He would like to see structured industry cargo screening where all the lines exchange key words and data on fraudulent shippers and are allowed to blacklist shippers that continuously make fraudulent bookings.<\/p>\n
The TT Club has been working with ICHCA International, the Global Shippers\u2019 Forum, World Shipping Council, CINS and others on a range of aspects around dangerous goods and declaration.<\/p>\n
\u201cRoughly two-thirds of cargo-related incidents relate to the poor packing process in its entirety, i.e. securing, load distribution and declaration,\u201d says TT Club risk management
director Peregrine Storrs-Fox. \u201cWe are seeing cargoes of a much wider range being put into containers and higher volumes of cargo being loaded on single ships, i.e. an adjacency risk. One package in one container can cause a hazard when it is next to a number of other containers, whether in the ship\u2019s hold or awaiting\/post shipment on the berth.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are often commonalities to be found, of shippers who habitually get packing processes wrong or declaring cargo incorrectly also being involved in customs fraud or other security-type issues, says Mr Storrs-Fox. A big issue is insufficient enforcement by cash-strapped governments. Enforcement is difficult to push up the agenda.<\/p>\n
There is also a mismatch between transport modes: \u201cThose involved in maritime enforcement may not have that much contact or leverage with those involved in road or rail enforcement. There are jurisdiction and communication and the legal frameworks are not in place.\u201d But above all, he says, the anti-trust issues restrict lines\u2019 ability to share information. \u201cShipping lines have reason to be concerned that they could fall foul of commercial\/anti-trust rules.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shipping line A may have words with a shipper and decide not to carry a cargo but that shipment is almost definitely still going to move, either with a competing carrier or even on one of line A\u2019s own ships because the other carrier is in the same alliance.<\/p>\n
As Mr Storrs-Fox points out, while a line gets as much information as it requires when dealing direct with a shipper, it receives only minimal information when dealing with an alliance partner\u2019s cargo, to prevent it from pinching cargo. Hence it can end up shipping the very container it rejected.<\/p>\n
More than 130 people ended up in hospital after an explosion and fire onboard a containership in Laem Chabang port in May, thought to have been caused by mis-declared cargoes of calcium hypochlorite and chlorinated paraffin wax.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis illustrates the risk that stevedores take these days. They are in a similar position to the partner line in that they will have limited information around each container coming into the terminal,\u201d says Mr Storrs-Fox.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey will do what they can to put the container in the right part of the yard, connecting to power and\/or monitoring if needed, but unless they are told this, they will deal with it as a normal box. We have seen explosions and fires related to the condition of the cargo at a number of terminals.\u201d<\/p>\n
From his own calculations, he believes there are more than 150,000 containers a year that represent \u2018ticking time bombs\u2019 in the supply chain. Could something like Cargo Patrol be made standard across the industry? <\/p>\n
The debate is fraught and full of complexity, he says. \u201cA shipping line will have anti-trust lawyers sitting on their back saying they should not be talking about anything like this to their competitors.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tackling the danger<\/p>\n
Tackling the dangers of mis-declared cargoes requires more consistency in messaging and standards and a reduction in the amount of erroneous paperwork, says Peregrine Storrs-Fox.<\/p>\n
Confusion and inconsistency can be reasons for shippers deciding to mis-declare. Each port around the world has its own restrictions for certain cargoes. Each line therefore has to check the restrictions to see whether they can carry a specific cargo (or amount of it) based on the intermediate port calls on their route. <\/p>\n
The restrictions vary, there is a high propensity to error because it is a very manual process, and sometimes restrictions are open to challenge, says Mr Storrs-Fox.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach time there is a restriction, whether at carrier or port level, there is an incentive to declare it as something else to get it through the system. I am not condoning bad behaviour but if someone wants to move cargo from A to Z, they need to find a way to do that. One way is to say that it is not quite as bad as it really is, in order to get around the
process \u2013 as with calcium hypochlorite, which is used for water treatment and purification, but is highly volatile and dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ken Rohlmann agrees: \u201cWhere there are a lot of port regulations or shipping lines are not accepting a specific cargo, it will find its way. My philosophy is that we try to have our
\u2018restricted\u2019 list as short as possible and invite shippers to find the best way and the safest way to transport it. Saying \u2018it isn\u2019t allowed\u2019 is going to increase the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thousands of containers moving around the globe are declared harmless whenthey actually hold dangerous cargoes. Felicity Landon looks at the implications<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":395,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-terminal-operations"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}