Global shipping company Hapag-Lloyd said Feb. 8 that it
registered considerably more incorrectly declared dangerous goods in 2015 than
it did in 2014.
A special safety software program developed jointly by
Hapag-Lloyd’s IT and dangerous goods experts identified 4,314 incorrectly
declared dangerous goods cases last year, an increase of 65 percent on the
previous year’s figure of 2,620 cases.
Hapag-Lloyd’s dangerous goods experts looked into more than
236,000 suspicious cases picked up by the safety software in 2015, as opposed
to more than 162,000 in 2014, an increase of about 46 percent.
Hapag-Lloyd’s Watchdog is a special safety software that
continuously checks cargo data to identify anything conspicuous.
Ken Rohlmann, head of Hapag-Lloyd’s dangerous goods
department, said there are two reasons behind the sharp increase.
“Firstly, the volume of cargo shipped by Hapag-Lloyd
increased considerably last year due to the company’s merger with CSAV’s
container business. Secondly, there was a sharp rise in (safety software)
findings following the devastating dangerous goods explosion in the port of
Tianjin in mid-August,” he said.
Many ports drastically tightened their dangerous goods
guidelines in the wake of the incident; some even prohibited dangerous goods
from being processed at all.
