ABS and CINS to produce stowage guidelines

CINS is a shipping line initiative, whose aim is to increase safety in the supply chain, reduce the number of cargo incidents on board ships and highlight the risks caused by certain cargoes or packing failures.

“Carriage of dangerous goods, not properly identified or accounted for, can be detrimental to the safety of the ship and, more importantly, to the people on board that ship,” said ABS’s vice president for technology, Gareth Burton.

“Central to our joint effort is advancing safety by developing a set of best practices incorporating key lessons learned provided by CINS members from past incidents,” he added.

The collaboration assembles key industry stakeholders to examine the challenges and risks that containership owners and operators face when stowing dangerous goods. The objective is to devise a comprehensive set of best practices to improve stowage planning and hazard mitigation for dangerous goods carriage.

“By working together with ABS and other leading international partners, we can share our experiences and help to improve the safety of stowing dangerous goods,” said Uffe Ernst-Frederiksen, CINS chairman.

ABS has been working with CINS members over the past six months to develop the guidelines which will be published on the CINS website following a three month trial.