Reports being made from worldwide terminals are giving us the good news that we have all been hoping to hear from July 1st. The introduction of the SOLAS convention, where shippers are responsible for providing Verified Gross Mass (VGM) prior to exporting is running smoothly, with very limited delays being felt.
The shipping industry has been holding it’s breath with these long awaited rules being contested strongly by various countries. Terminals in France have recorded that 100% of their export containers are VGM (verified gross mass) compliant.
.“This is a challenging time for the industry and our expectation was that perhaps we would see rates of anywhere between 50% and 80% compliance on initial sailings — so this is a superb result.” said MSC managing director Philippe Lestrade.
The situation has been slightly different in the United Kingdom, where Tilbury has found that only half of the containers that have arrived for export had a verfied gross mass in place.
Things have been A OK over in the United States. Ryan Molinaro, terminal manager at the West Basin Container Terminal in Los Angeles, described Friday morning’s traffic as “pretty smooth” and said the terminal’s gates haven’t had trouble with receiving VGM information.
