White Cargoes and Contamination Claims
Kaolin, soda ash, alumina, titanium dioxide and white sand: why visible contamination in a white cargo is a specification failure, and how the claim and its defence are built.
White cargoes are the fine, pale mineral powders whose commercial value depends on purity and appearance, and they generate a distinctive class of cargo claim. Kaolin, soda ash, alumina, titanium dioxide and white silica sand all go into processes with impurity specifications measured in hundredths of a percent, so rust scale, paint flake or residue from a previous cargo fails the specification long before it is visible as a stain.
The full article will cover why these cargoes are treated as a group, the cleanliness standards they attract and the coating condition that underlies those standards, and the loading and discharge practices that keep contamination out.
It will also cover the claim itself: how a receiver establishes contamination by sampling and analysis rather than by inspection alone, what the owner’s evidence looks like and why the load port hold inspection is the centre of it, the role of the surveyor at both ends, and the allocation of the loss through the charter party and the bill of lading regime.