Verified gross mass and democratic weighing implementation in container transportation: Effects on ports and exporters

In the world trade from the past to the present day, the container transportation has made a great contribution to maritime transportation. One of the most used modes of transport in international trade is maritime transportation. With the discovery of the container, the marine transportation has been greatly improved. Because container transportation is fast and costs are low, containers protect the goods from external factors, very various goods can be transported in the same container, they can be used many times and they are sturdy. Containers have been standardized since the first time they have been found and have begun to be produced in the same measurement all over the world. Developments in the world have dramatically improved the ability of the vessels to be integrated into container transportation. Developments have caused ports to be integrated into container transport and to increase their capacity and changed their handling equipment to be suitable for container transport. At the same time, liners have been affected by this large spread of container standardization and have adapted their vessels to container transport, it has been ensured that the newly manufactured vessels are produced for container transport only. Container transport, which is so important in world trade, and container, the main ingredient of container transportation importance must be further increased. In the maritime trade and in general worldview, the first of the major issue is safety of life. There has been a lot of accident in container transportation and some of these have been caused with the loss of life at the end. We need to keep the safety of life at the highest level in container transportation. Maritime organizations have set Safety Of Life At Sea rules and they make them safer with new regulations. One of the lastest regulation is verified gross mass declaration. For the containers which will be transported by sea, container gross weight must be verified by the authorized and calibrated weighing devices and report the documents to the line and port by shipper or authorized person before loading on board. From 01.07.2016, containers started to be weighed before the loading on ship. As the verified gross weight will determine the total weight of the container, container-based accidents that can occur in ports and ships can be avoided, loading plans and operations will continue to be more healthy and uninterrupted. After the confirmed gross weight of the containers, the ports or outside weighers charge the exporters. A democratic weighing should be made by arranging the resulting fee on certain criteria. Democratic Weighing is to determine a weighing fee according to the price, quantity, weight of the products that producers produce and the type of product most loaded from the ports. In this way, producer companies which products goods in small scale and value can be supported and a growth path can be achieved in a more competitive structure. In my thesis, which consists three parts, container transportation, container and container ports are examined in the first part. In the second part, container weighing application, fair trade, democratic weighting and survey for the weighting are explained. In the third part, I surveyed our ports and exporters in the container weighing process, conducted a questionnaire survey on the problems experienced in Turkish ports and conducted a survey on how exporting companies are affected by this process and solutions. In conclusion, it was found out that the exporters affected and dissatisfied because of the costs for the weighting. Many of our ports are qualified enough but need some developments in process.