Cristina Martinez of the Barcelona law firm Indeco tells us that on 14 January the Spanish government introduced regulations requiring all freight containers to comply with the 1972 Safe Container convention.
Containers in which the CSC plate is either missing or defective (for instance, if the plate does not show the date the next inspection is due) may be detained by the authorities, who will also act against containers which are in a dangerous condition. This means that the container will not be permitted to be loaded on to a ship at any Spanish port. Cargo may be transferred to another container, but the original unit will not be permitted to leave the port until the defects have been remedied. The same applies to containers landed in Spanish ports.
Shipowners, carriers and container operators may also be fined if they use a container which does not comply with the regulations, while the container owner may also be subject to penalties if the container is not well maintained in accordance to the new regulations or has no CSC plate.
An estimated two million containers are sold annually by container shipping lines and leasing companies. They may be re-purposed for a wide range of applications or carry on their working life in the shipping industry.
In 2011 the International Maritime Organization (IMO) agreed a two-year output on 'Development of measures to prevent loss of containers', in part arising from the
There continue to be improvements in efficiency and simplification arising from the SOLAS VGM requirements. Aggregating some of these with initiatives in other aspects of the supply chain could deliver exponential advance in safety.
The use of standardised containers for much of global trade has become second nature; the range of cargo types utilising such units continues to expand. There is significant reliance placed by the various stakeholders on the overall integrity of the concept, some explicit and some implicit.
