BC Code: The Predecessor to the IMSBC Code
The Code of Safe Practice for Solid Bulk Cargoes from 1965 to 2004: what it contained, what carried forward into the IMSBC Code, and what changed when the regime became mandatory.
The Code of Safe Practice for Solid Bulk Cargoes, universally called the BC Code, was the recommendatory instrument that governed solid bulk carriage from 1965 until the IMSBC Code superseded it. Its last edition was adopted in 2004, and the resolution adopting the IMSBC Code expressly provides that the new Code supersedes it.
The full article will cover the BC Code’s content and structure, its tripartite classification of cargoes into materials that may liquefy, materials possessing chemical hazards and materials possessing neither, and the individual cargo entries it carried. It will trace what was preserved in the IMSBC Code and what was restructured or expanded.
It will also cover the change that mattered most, which was one of legal status rather than of content. The BC Code was recommendatory throughout its life, given effect through flag State and port State adoption rather than by the Convention, while the IMSBC Code is mandatory under SOLAS. What that changed for shippers, masters and port State control, and the transitional handling as the regimes crossed over, will be set out.