Education key to container packing concerns

The latest effort to prevent containership fires has been launched by the newly formed Cargo Integrity Group. But will its efforts to improve the packing of containers and promote the CTU Code make a change this time? James Baker and Janet Porter, of Lloyd’s List, report

Poorly packed containers and misdeclared dangerous goods are the bane of the container shipping sector. One bad box can literally sink a ship. But the contents of a container are an area about which container lines have almost no control. A sealed box is delivered to a port and craned onto a ship, with the verification of its contents done, if at all, by parties unrelated to the container line.