In general, investigations into incidents along the international supply chain – whether on roads, rail, inland waterway or at sea – can often be attributed to poor practices in the packing of cargo transport units (CTUs) and coiled materials are a particular hazard.
As a leading insurer of international container transport TT Club has dealt with many incidents where coils, mostly of steel, have been improperly packed and insufficiently secured in the container, leading to the cargo shifting inside the unit and usually breaking out, resulting in injuries or damage to property. The packing process is critical given the forces exerted on the freight during a typical journey, such as braking or turning of a road vehicle, variable handling techniques at port terminals and significant, sometimes violent motions of a ship at sea. The consequences of these types of forces on poorly packed cargo will, of course, vary from over-turned trucks, to train derailment and damaged cranes to containers lost overboard and damage to the ship. Coils have even been known to break through the floor of a carrying unit and escaped into traffic. In short, improperly secured coil materials can have significant and fatal consequences.
“Such experiences led us to collaborate with the CINS Organisation – a significant safety-based initiative set up by major container shipping lines,” explains TT Club’s Peregrine Storrs-Fox, “In order to update and expand our earlier ‘Stop Loss’ briefing guide, which addressed carriage of metal coils.”
The freely available revised guidelines, ‘Transport of Coiled Materials in Containers'[1], focus attention on how a container packer can understand the risks involved through the supply chain in order to ensure that the coils are packed and secured successfully. Equally, while recognising that there are a number of proprietary solutions available, these guidelines specifically support less sophisticated operations reliant primarily on timber for load distribution and bracing, where the greatest risk exposure has been seen.