Grain Clean: The Hold Cleanliness Standard
The grain clean hold standard: its trade definition, what it requires in practice, the Grain Code floor behind it, and the cargoes it is and is not adequate for.
Grain clean is the most commonly specified hold cleanliness standard in dry bulk chartering, and it is a trade definition rather than a regulatory one. Holds are required to be clean, swept and washed down with fresh water, free from insects, odor, residue of previous cargo, lashing material, loose rust scale and paint flakes, then dried and well ventilated and ready to receive the intended cargo, subject to inspection.
The full article will cover each limb of that definition and what it takes to achieve, including the sequence of sweeping, washing, rinsing, drying and ventilating, the treatment of previous cargo residues in frames and brackets, and the difference between loose scale that must come off and adherent scale that need not.
It will also cover what sits behind and beside the standard: the regulatory floor for grain carriage under the International Code for the Safe Carriage of Grain in Bulk, the standards above and below grain clean in the usual five-step ladder, and the cargoes for which grain clean is inadequate because the receiver’s specification is tighter than the eye.