Verified Gross Mass and Container Weight Declaration

Verified gross mass is the total mass of a packed container and its contents, verified by the shipper before the container may be loaded aboard a ship. SOLAS Chapter VI Regulation 2 makes it a condition of loading, and it may be obtained either by weighing the packed container or by weighing the contents and adding the tare mass, with the method subject to the approval of the competent authority.

The requirement exists because misdeclared container weight distorts every calculation that depends on it. A stow planned on declared weights that are wrong produces a stability calculation, a hull girder stress calculation and a lashing force calculation that are all wrong in the same direction, and the error concentrates where heavy boxes are stowed high.

Weight misdeclaration recurs in casualty investigations into container stack collapse, and it interacts directly with the roll angle a lashing arrangement can tolerate.

No sale term allocates the VGM obligation or its cost. The drafters of Incoterms 2020 considered the SOLAS requirement and recorded, at paragraphs 60 and 61 of the ICC Introduction, that the obligations and costs were too specific and complex to warrant explicit mention in the rules. SOLAS Chapter VI Regulation 2 puts the duty on the shipper regardless, so the cost has to be allocated expressly in the contract of sale.

The full article will cover the two permitted verification methods, the documentation and its transmission to the terminal and the ship, the tolerance and enforcement practice across jurisdictions, the consequences of misdeclaration for stability and securing, and the relationship to the misdeclaration of dangerous goods.