Who will pay for the investment?

Safmarine has called for clarity on a number of issues should compulsory weighing of boxes be introduced: • Who will pay for this investment? Will it be the ports/terminals? And will they be prepared to invest? • If the ports are required to invest in this equipment, how will they recoup this investment, particularly considering the current terminal handling charge (THC) for containers is per box and per container type – and not per weight. In other words, if the current THC is unaffected by the weight of the box, surely there is no operational or commercial imperative for the port/terminal to weigh the box. • And if the ports pass the cost of the investment on to shipping lines, will shipping lines be prepared to absorb the cost of compulsory weighing? Should they absorb the cost when shippers are, after all, the ones responsible for accurately declaring container weights? • And, should it become a requirement to recover the costs from shippers, how will shipping lines feel about ‘penalising’ customers who generally comply with the weight regulations? In our view, the compulsory weighing of containers will need to become an industry requirement (ie legally and globally enforced by the IMO) and a global standard will be required with regard to cost, to prevent lines from gaining a competitive advantage by ignoring the overweight rules (for example by choosing not the pass on the costs to their customers).