The founding vision for the CINS Organisation, to highlight risks posed by certain cargoes and packing failures in order to improve safety in the liner shipping industry, has continued to demonstrate value through 2014. The last year has proved to be one of substantial consolidation of the data capture capability, increasing the authority with which the organisation can address issues arising in the industry.

Founded by five of the top 20 liner operators in order to capture key incident data, participants in the CINS Organisation during 2014 numbered 12 lines and accounted for 61% of container slot capacity (see

www.cinsnet.com

). CINS facilitates the capture by liner operators of structured key causal information relating to cargo and container incidents. The information capture explicitly excludes any shipper data in order to preclude any anti-trust concerns. The information gathered provides an early warning of worrying trends, whether relating to cargoes that display dangerous characteristics or unsafe practices in the container supply chain.

CINS represents a unique co-operation between container lines to promote safety in the maritime supply chain; its Board is comprised of representatives from the five founding lines, being CMA-CGM, Evergreen, Hapag-Lloyd, Maersk Line and MSC.

"CINS represents a unique co-operation between container lines to promote safety in the maritime supply chain"

As with so much in life, as the participating lines have recorded more information, so they have derived greater value. A number of the lines have incorporated review of the database into their regular cargo management meetings. By doing this, they integrate awareness of any emerging trends and are able to correlate problems seen in the broader industry with those identified within their own settings.

The presenting issues

Throughout it relatively short history, the CINS Organisation has repeatedly identified cargo leakage as a major area of concern; see Chart 1. If anything, the last year has intensified this concern. It has become particularly apparent that the incidents relating to leakage not infrequently concern bulk solid cargoes - not simply liquids - often where the lining or packaging has been inappropriate. Furthermore, unpackaged cargoes, such as hides and waste, have also proved problematic.

Chart 1 - Analysis of Incident type (2013-2014)