Neptune Atlas

Bulk

Dry bulk cargo handling

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A bulk carrier that has arrived has not started loading. Between the two sit hold cleanliness, an agreed loading plan, the terminal’s rate, the trimming and two draft surveys, and every one of them is a place where hours turn into demurrage. The broker who thinks of loading as one event has no way of explaining a claim.

Holds have to pass before anything counts

Almost every dry cargo charter makes readiness conditional on the holds being clean, dry, free of loose scale and rust and fit to receive the intended cargo. A ship anchored off the port with a hold that fails inspection is not ready, whatever her notice of readiness says, and in most trades that means the clock has not started.

The standard is set by the cargo, not by a general idea of cleanliness. Grain cargoes are the strict end and are commonly surveyed to a formal grain-clean standard. A cargo of coal following a cargo of coal needs sweeping and little else. What makes this a commercial matter rather than an operational one is the previous cargo: a residue of the last stem that stains or contaminates the next one produces a cargo claim years after the ship has sailed, and the two cargoes were fixed by two different people who never spoke.

Hold cleaning takes time, water and often a deviation. Who pays for it, and whether a failed inspection suspends laytime, are charterparty questions, and the forms do not answer them the same way.

The loading plan is a joint document

The BLU Code, the IMO code of practice for the safe loading and unloading of bulk carriers, is built on one principle: the master is responsible at all times for the safe loading and unloading of the ship, and the details are agreed with the terminal in the form of a written plan. It exists because bulk carriers were being broken by their own cargo.

The hazard is not the total weight, it is the sequence. A modern terminal can put thousands of tonnes an hour into one hold. Filling holds in the wrong order puts bending moments and shear forces into the hull that its scantlings were never designed for, and the ship can be damaged, or lost, while sitting alongside in flat water. The plan states how many pours, in which holds, in what order, with what ballast being discharged in parallel, and where the checks fall.

A terminal that runs ahead of the plan, or a master who stops it because the terminal has, is a delay with a cause, and that cause decides who pays for it. This is why the loading plan and the statement of facts belong in the same file.

Trimming, and the word doing two jobs

Trim in the naval sense is the difference between forward and after draft. Trimming a cargo means levelling it, so that the surface is reasonably flat and the cargo reaches into the corners of the compartment. They are unrelated ideas sharing a word, and cargo trimming is the one that ends up in the charterparty.

It matters for three reasons. It increases the quantity the hold takes. It is a stability requirement for cargoes that can shift, which is the whole basis of the Grain Code. And it is labour, so the charterparty says who pays for it, commonly through a spout-trimmed or machine-trimmed provision that shifts the cost between owner and charterer.

The quantity is settled by a draft survey, not by the terminal’s scale

How much was loaded is measured by reading the ship’s drafts before and after, correcting for water density, trim, hog and sag, and deducting bunkers, water and constants. The difference in displacement is the cargo. It is arithmetic on the ship, done by a surveyor, and it is what the bill of lading figure is usually based on.

A careful survey is accurate to something like half to one per cent. On a Panamax stem that is hundreds of tonnes of pure measurement noise, which is why shore figures and ship figures disagree routinely and why a letter of protest over the difference is ordinary rather than hostile. The useful diagnostic is the constant: if it comes out materially different at load and at discharge, the ship did not gain weight, one of the two surveys is wrong.

Discharge damages the ship, and that is normal

Bulk is discharged with grabs, and a grab is a blunt instrument dropped repeatedly onto the tank top. Bulldozers go into the hold to clean up the last of it. Damage to tank tops, hopper plating and hold ladders is an expected outcome rather than an accident, which is why charters carry a clause allocating the cost of stevedore damage and a time limit for reporting it, usually a short one. Damage not notified inside that window is damage the owner absorbs.

Cargoes that are dangerous without being dangerous goods

The IMSBC Code sorts every solid bulk cargo into one of three groups, and the grouping decides the precautions.

For Group A the shipper must declare the moisture content and the transportable moisture limit, with the limit determined within six months of loading and the moisture content sampled within seven days of it. A broker fixing concentrates without a liquefaction clause in the charterparty has left the master with a decision and the owner with the risk. BIMCO publishes a standard clause for exactly this, and it exists because the alternative was a master refusing a cargo with nothing in the contract behind him.

Where the money leaks

Nearly every dispute on a dry cargo voyage comes out of this sequence rather than out of the rate. Hours between arrival and a passed hold inspection. Waiting for a berth against a laytime clause that may or may not cover it. A terminal working below the guaranteed rate. Rain stopping work on a cargo that cannot get wet, and whether the charterparty puts that on the weather-working day. A shortage between the ship figure and the shore figure. None of it appears in the recap, all of it appears in the statement of facts, and the laytime calculation is where the two are finally reconciled.

References

Notice of readinessThe one page that starts the laytime clock: arrived, ready, tendered, and the separate way each of those three is attacked. How to calculate laytime and demurrageWhere the clock starts, what stops it, how the demurrage figure is actually worked out, and why most claims are lost on the paperwork rather than the merits. The statement of factsThe agent’s timed record of everything that happened in port. Every demurrage claim is decided on it, long after anyone was watching. Stowage factor and broken stowageTwo numbers that both turn space into tonnes, and only one of them is printed in the cargo book. Grain cargoes and stabilityThe cargo that can capsize a ship that is nowhere near her marks, and the paper that decides whether she may carry it.

Neptune Atlas

A fixture in Neptune Atlas carries its laytime terms, and the statement of facts from the port agent is read into a laytime sheet rather than retyped, so the hours lost to a failed hold inspection or a shut-out are counted where they happened. Every paid plan starts with 7 free days. A card is needed to start them, and cancelling before they end costs nothing.

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