Effective 1st July 2016, international maritime law will mandate the verification of gross mass of any packed/laden container as a pre-condition to it being loaded on board a ship.

The International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) regulations prescribes two methods by which the shipper may obtain the verified gross mass of a packed container:

Method 1
Upon the conclusion of packing and sealing a container, the shipper may weigh, or have arranged that a third party weighs, the packed container.

Method 2
The shipper (or, by arrangement of the shipper, a third party), may weigh all packages and cargo items, including the mass of pallets, dunnage and other packing and securing material to be packed in the container, and add the tare mass of the container to the sum of the single masses using a certified method.

It is important to note these requirements are placed on the shipper. The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has released guidelines for the “verified gross mass of a container carrying cargo”. A copy of this document can be found in the “Trade Tools” section of our website. Within this document the Shipper means a legal entity or person named on the bill of lading or sea waybill or equivalent multimodal transport document (e.g. "through" bill of lading) as shipper and/or who (or in whose name or on whose behalf) a contract of carriage has been concluded with a shipping company.

We will provide further updates closer to implementation, in the meantime for more information please contact our office on 1300 528 344.