PRESS RELEASE
On 1 st July a new regulation requiring the gross mass of a packed container to be verified before it is loaded onto a ship came into force, under the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS). This will help to ensure that containers are properly stowed, prevent incidences of container
stacks collapsing and containers being lost overboard and reduce the possibility of associated injury or loss of life.
KIMO can take credit for its significant contribution to this outcome. In 2010 KIMO’s lobbying of MEPs on lost containers resulted in a debate held in the European Parliament that supported KIMO’s calls for better regulation and enforcement and instructed the Commission to investigate the issue.
Following KIMO’s lobbying in the Netherlands, the Dutch Government undertook a target inspection of containers which found that 63% did not match the weights on the manifest. This resulted in the Netherlands, Denmark and Australia submitting a paper to the International Marine Organisation
(IMO) Maritime Safety Committee (MSC) calling for measures to reduce the loss of containers from shipping. The IMO MSC agreed to add it to their work program. Since 2011 the IMO have been developing measures to prevent the loss of containers and the new requirement was adopted in 2014.
For more information see kimointernational.org/wp/wp/ or contact:
Arabelle Bentley, KIMO International Secretariat
[email protected] +44 1595 744807
Notes to editors:
KIMO (Local Authorities International Environmental Organisation) is an
association of local authorities whose goal is to eliminate pollution from the
Northern Seas. The organisation has more than 70 members in Belgium,
Denmark, Faroe Islands, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden and the U.K,
representing over 6 million people.