Cristian Navarrete Celis, Director at Global Business Support and Project Lead for the Global Introduction of VGM at Hapag-Lloyd. Cristian, effective July 1st VGM was introduced worldwide.
Did you face major problems regarding the new regulation? How many containers have not been declared at all?
Defining and enforcing a “No VGM- no load” policy was not popular. We did not load containers where VGM was not declared. Customers told us that “other carriers” still do. On the first day, 200containers were rolled or left behind due to missing VGM. Hapag-Lloyd took the regulation very seriously from the first moment which will help us in moving to the next phase very smoothly.
WHAT KIND OF CONSEQUENCES DID YOUTAKE IF CONTAINERS VGM HAS NOT BEENDECLARED?
Our customer service teams actively works to trace containers that have their VGM missing prior to the defined cut-off. Containers missing VGMs after the cut-off have been rolled to the next available vessel. There could have been charges for the account of the cargo owner (i.e. storage, roll fees, among others).
THE INTERNATIONAL MARITIMEORGANIZATION (IMO) DID NOT DICTATETHE FORMAT IN WHICH THE DATA MUSTBE TRANSMITTED. DO YOU SEE THIS AS ANADVANTAGE OR A DISADVANTAGE?
We saw it as an advantage. It allowed the creation of a VGM specific message: VERMAS. VERMAS came out of the joint efforts from industry key players (SMDG group of which Hapag-Lloyd is an important contributor) who also initiated updates to existing EDI messages…
