Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

newsworthy

Foltz says shippers bear full responsibility for accurately certifying container weight

Georgia port executive director says unlikely to seek another top port job.

The outgoing head of the Georgia Ports Authority (GPA) said that shippers must bear the full responsibility of complying with maritime law requiring that the accurate weight of an ocean container and its contents be certified in writing before the box is loaded aboard a vessel.

Separately, Curtis J. Foltz said he is unlikely to accept another port director's position once he steps down as executive director of the GPA on June 30, down when the port authority's fiscal year ends. In an interview yesterday, Foltz, 55, said he would return to the private sector, where he spent his entire career before joining GPA in 2004 as chief operating officer. GPA owns and operates the container port of Savannah, the bulk and breakbulk port of Brunswick, and the inland terminals of Bainbridge and Columbus. Foltz became executive director in January 2010.


Foltz's comments about the contentious issue of certifying the "verified gross mass" of containers comes as the Federal Maritime Commission and the U.S. Coast Guard prepared this afternoon to convene an extraordinary "listening session" with stakeholders to discuss the impact of the amendment to the 102-year-old Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) international treaty administered by the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

The provision, scheduled to take effect July 1, requires shippers to certify in writing the weight of a container and its cargo, or else the box will not be loaded. A shipper and terminal operator would face massive legal liability if a ship was sunk or damaged and it was discovered that a container aboard the vessel had not been certified in writing. The language, which holds the force of law in the IMO's 171 member countries, was adopted as a result of concerns that seagoing ships were being damaged due to illegally or improperly loaded containers.

In the interview, Foltz dismissed claims by a lobby for U.S. agricultural and forest-products exporters that shippers cannot expect to accurately assess the weight of the container when they don't control the equipment. "You find me a shipper that doesn't know what they're putting into the container, and what the density and weight of the shipment is, and that person shouldn't be shipping goods," Foltz said.

The shipper lobby said its members should only be responsible for certifying the weight of the goods. However, Foltz said shippers know the specifics of their shipments better than anyone, and should be the parties responsible for certifying the total weight.

Foltz acknowledged that global maritime authorities have not been clear in articulating who is responsible for certifying the total container weight and how the program will be administered. Terminal operators have said they don't have the space in their facilities for scales, and the U.S. exporter lobby has claimed that the technology doesn't exists to facilitate the transmission of relevant container weight data among the various stakeholders.

Foltz said that no one port or region stands to benefit, because the provision is being applied on a global scale. The U.S. exporter lobby has urged the Coast Guard, which is responsible for implementing the provision, to hold off until the U.S.' top 15 trading partners have adopted the language as well.

Foltz, who held numerous executive positions at CSX World Terminals, the former Sea-Land Service Inc. steamship carrier, and truckers Overnite Transportation and McLean Trucking, said he joined GPA for "any number of reasons." He declined to specify them, other than to laud the state of Georgia for its deep understanding of the role that transportation, logistics, and maritime play in accelerating commercial and economic development, and for raising the competitiveness of the Southeast U.S. "Georgia gets it," he said.

Foltz announced his departure from GPA on Feb. 3. He will be succeeded by Griff Lynch, GPA's current COO. Foltz will serve as a consultant to GPA in an undetermined capacity for one year after his departure, the state agency said.

Savannah's Garden City Terminal is the country's fourth busiest, and the busiest single-terminal container facility in the U.S. Despite its relatively shallow water depth of 42 feet, Garden City has become a huge success. That's due largely to its strong landside operation, which includes the largest cluster of import distribution centers on the East Coast; on-deck access to the two large Eastern railroads, CSX Corp. and Norfolk Southern Corp.; and close proximity to Interstate 95, running north to south, and I-16, running east to west. The facility is the second-largest exporter in the U.S., exceeded only by the Port of Los Angeles.

The GPA, which has fought for years to get approval and funding to deepen its channel to 47 feet, expects work to be completed on the project by 2017. Foltz said the additional depth is badly needed to efficiently accommodate the influx of megavessels—those with container-carrying capacity of 10,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) or more.

The Latest

More Stories

nimble smart robots for fedex

FedEx picks Nimble for fulfillment automation

Parcel giant FedEx Corp. is automating its fulfillment flows by investing in the AI robotics and autonomous e-commerce fulfillment technology firm Nimble, and announcing plans to use the San Francisco-based startup’s tech in its own returns network.

The size of FedEx’s investment wasn’t disclosed, but the company was the lead investor of Nimble’s $106 million “series C” funding round, announced last week. The round was co-led by existing shareholder Cedar Pine LLC.

Keep ReadingShow less

Featured

Logistics gives back: October 2024

For the past seven years, third-party service provider ODW Logistics has provided logistics support for the Pelotonia Ride Weekend, a campaign to raise funds for cancer research at The Ohio State University’s Comprehensive Cancer Center–Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute. As in the past, ODW provided inventory management services and transportation for the riders’ bicycles at this year’s event. In all, some 7,000 riders and 3,000 volunteers participated in the ride weekend.


Keep ReadingShow less
siemens logistics airport buggage

Vanderlande to acquire Siemens Logistics for $325 million

The logistics process automation provider Vanderlande has agreed to acquire Siemens Logistics for $325 million, saying its specialty in providing value-added baggage and cargo handling and digital solutions for airport operations will complement Netherlands-based Vanderlande’s business in the warehousing, airports, and parcel sectors.

The acquisition has received approval from the Supervisory and Management Boards of both Vanderlande and its parent company Toyota Industries Corporation (TICO) as well as the Management Board of parent company Siemens AG.

Keep ReadingShow less

Resilience is a daily fight

I recently came across a report showing that 86% of CEOs around the world see resiliency problems in their supply chains, and that business leaders are spending more time than ever tackling supply chain-related challenges. Initially I was surprised, thinking that the lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic surely prepared industry leaders for just about anything, helping to bake risk and resiliency planning into corporate strategies for companies of all sizes.

But then I thought about the growing number of issues that can affect supply chains today—more frequent severe weather events, accelerating cybersecurity threats, and the tangle of emerging demands and regulations around decarbonization, to name just a few. The level of potential problems seems to be increasing at lightning speed, making it difficult, if not impossible, to plan for every imaginable scenario.

Keep ReadingShow less
AI tops digital supply chain investment priorities

AI tops digital supply chain investment priorities

Investing in artificial intelligence (AI) is a top priority for supply chain leaders as they develop their organization’s technology roadmap, according to data from research and consulting firm Gartner.

AI—including machine learning—and Generative AI (GenAI) ranked as the top two priorities for digital supply chain investments globally among more than 400 supply chain leaders surveyed earlier this year. But key differences apply regionally and by job responsibility, according to the research.

Keep ReadingShow less