Samsa appoints second agent

The SA Maritime Safety Authority
(Samsa) – overseeing the Solas
container weight regulations – has
just appointed a
second accreditation
agent, and the
application procedure
for other appointees
is being approached
with urgency,
according to Samsa’s
occupational health
and safety executive,
Kirsty Goodwin.
The second
accreditation agent –
following the earlier
appointment of
General & Marine
– is the Durban-based ABC Kings,
specialising in customs agency,
brokerage and consultancy. And it
will be responsible for accrediting
shippers’ verified gross mass (VGM)
applications for containers weighed
using Solas guidelines’ method 2.
This is defined as: ‘The shipper
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.’
The reason for
Samsa’s working on
the appointment of
further accreditation
agents at full
throttle, according to
Goodwin, is because
“the demand is quite
high in each province,
so we’re approaching
it urgently”.
You can add to
that the fact that
the July 1 deadline
date for the imposition of Solas VGM
requirements is only 10 weeks off.
Samsa was currently examining
several applications, but the speed
at which these could be finished was
dependent on the quality (or lack
thereof) of each, Goodwin told FTW.
“Industry also needs to play its
part,” she added.
INSERT & CAPTION
The application
procedure for other
appointees is being
approached with
urgency.
– Kirsty Goodwin