Vessels on passage to some European ports are increasingly being requested by charterers to divert to an intermediate port to remove fumigants from the cargo holds prior to the final discharge port.
According to North Club, this mostly concerns vessels carrying Ukrainian and South American grains heading to the Dutch discharge ports of Rotterdam or Amsterdam.
In these cases, charterers have requested the vessel divert to Cadiz, giving the reason that they wish to remove the fumigants to avoid delays due to strict requirements at the discharge port.
Some European countries, such as the Netherlands, do indeed have strict requirements on fumigant gases levels in the holds. These requirements must be met before allowing discharge of cargo.
On arrival (typically at anchor), appointed chemists will measure the amount of residual fumigant gas remaining in the holds. This must be less than 1 part per million (ppm) to allow discharge to commence.
If found to be 1ppm or greater, the vessel must remain at anchor, ventilating where possible to lower the fumigant gas level to less than 1ppm. North’s correspondent in the Netherlands, Dutch P&I Correspondents, report this has in some cases taken up to three weeks.
To avoid the potential for delays at the discharge port, charterers are requesting the fumigation sleeves be removed earlier, to allow the holds to be ventilated for the remaining passage and to increase the chances of residual fumigant gases being less than 1ppm at time of discharge.
It is also reported that when measuring the residual gas levels in the holds and on deck, some authorities request the gas monitoring records taken on passage, as described in the IMSBC Code section 3.6.
On occasion, these records have been found to be poor or not completed, leading to further delays and the potential for fines.
If requested to call at an intermediate port for the removal of fumigant sleeves, operators should consider:
When removing fumigants at an intermediate port, operators should consider:
Note that there are no guarantees that the fumigant gas levels will be less than 1ppm on arrival at the discharge port, even when the fumigants are removed at an earlier point in time
North Club warns.
The instruction to divert the vessel to allow the removal of fumigants at an intermediate port will usually come from the charterer as a result of a commercial decision by them to attempt to prevent delays at the discharge port which would be for their account.
Such a diversion is, however, likely to constitute a deviation under the bill of lading contact which could result in a loss of P&I cover for the carrier.
