Evergreen levies $35,000 per container fine for misdeclared hazardous cargo

News of carrier fines for misdeclaration of cargoes continues to filter in with Taiwan’s Evergreen issuing the highest penalties seen by Splash to date.

Evergreen has told clients that any omission, concealment or misdeclaration of hazardous cargoes that it finds will result in fines of $35,000 per container.

A host of other carriers have issued warnings to clients this month of fines for misdeclared cargoes. OOCL and Maersk have not specified how much they will be charging while Hapag-Lloyd and HMM have said they’ll hit clients with a $15,000 per box charge.

Other carriers contacted by Splash are understood to be reviewing their own penalty structures with more announcements due soon.

According to the Cargo Incident Notification System (CINS), nearly 25% of all serious incidents onboard containerships are attributable to misdeclared cargos with insurer TT CLUB warning recently that a major fire breaks out on a boxship every 60 days, the most recent example being onboard the 10,106 teu APL Le Havre, which suffered a severe blaze in the aft of the ship when a fire broke out in six containers on Friday evening.