Weighing Containers

Following the publication of the MARIN Report “Lashing@Sea” the International Maritime Organisation’s Marine Safety Committee commenced a number of projects to reduce the number of containers lost at sea.  One of the suggestions made in the MARIN report proposed that containers were weighed upon entry into terminals and that the measured mass should be used for planning the ship’s stowage.

As a result the Safety of Life at Sea convention (SOLAS) was amended by International Maritime Organisation Resolution MSC.380 (94) which is shown in Annex 1.

The shipper is responsible for providing a Verified Gross Mass (VGM) for the packed container, without which the container may not be loaded on board a ship.  Shippers are permitted to use two methods to produce the verified gross mass:

  1. weighing the packed container using calibrated and certified equipment; or
  2. weighing all packages and cargo items, including the mass of pallets, dunnage and other securing material to be packed in the container and adding the tare mass of the container to the sum of the single masses, using a certified method approved by the competent authority of the State in which packing of the container was completed

Weighing containers is a large subject and ETS Consulting will be providing more information on weighing of containers and their contents in due course.

Weighbridge Survey

As part of the work that ETS Consulting is undertaking, we are surveying weighbridge installations across the world and request all operators of weighbridges, whether they are for own and / or public use to complete the survey:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/WeighbridgeSurvey