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BIMCO is working on a charter party clause to help tackle potential abuse by sanctions busters of the Automatic Identification System (AIS) which is mandatory for all ships to carry under SOLAS.
The Just in Time Arrival Clause 2021 is for use in voyage charter parties where owners and charterers have agreed to operate a just in time arrival scheme that permits charterers to ask owners to optimise the speed of the ship to arrive at a destination at an agreed time. The clause takes a generic approach so that it can also form part of different vessel and port management schemes around the world. It may also be used together with the BIMCO Port Call Data Exchange Clause 2021 which has been designed to encourage wider application and use of the IMO data model framework for the harmonised exchange of ship/port information.
In a bid to encourage wider adoption of just in time (JIT) arrival principles in the bulk sector, BIMCO has published a new clause for voyage charter parties to promote more efficient shipping procedures and as a result, help reduce CO2 emissions.
The outbreak of COVID-19 and its impact on business and society is unprecedented. We are learning day by day how we must adapt to these new circumstances. Ports around the world are handling the situation in different ways and it is difficult to provide a one-size-fits-all contractual solution. What one port in one country of the world is doing, restricting or prohibiting, is not necessarily the same as a port in a neighbouring country does. BIMCO urges the industry to be pragmatic and work together to find solutions. Not every answer will be found in the contract and parties should do their best to communicate openly about the issues they face and identify compromise solutions to find a way through these difficult times. This Q&A is a list of commonly asked questions together with our answers. We will update this Q&A on a regular basis to share the guidance we provide on BIMCO’s Infectious or Contagious Diseases (IOCD) Clauses.
The threshold for invoking BIMCO’s Infectious or Contagious Diseases (IOCD) Clauses is necessarily set at a high level to avoid misuse. The two clauses, one for time and the other for voyage charters, are designed to respond to extreme outbreaks of diseases and not just “everyday” illnesses.
The outbreak from time to time of virulent diseases can have significant implications for ship owners and operators. This might include quarantine of a vessel and crew in an area where the disease is prevalent as well as the imposition of restrictions, possibly weeks or months later, in ports remote from the infected region as a precaution against the disease spreading further. The Novel Corona virus is the latest outbreak of a series of contagious disease that may impact shipping operations. In 2015 it was the Ebola virus and 10 years before that the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that caused similar concern. It is likely that equally serious strains of existing, or newly identified, diseases will occur from time to time. For this reason BIMCO has chosen to develop a set of comprehensive and clearly worded generic clauses for voyage and time charter parties that can be applied not only to the Novel Corona virus outbreak but to other similar virulent diseases that may occur in the future.
The outbreak from time to time of virulent diseases can have significant implications for ship owners and operators. This might include quarantine of a vessel and crew in an area where the disease is prevalent as well as the imposition of restrictions, possibly weeks or months later, in ports remote from the infected region as a precaution against the disease spreading further. The Novel Corona virus is the latest outbreak of a series of contagious disease that may impact shipping operations. In 2015 it was the Ebola virus and 10 years before that the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that caused similar concern. It is likely that equally serious strains of existing, or newly identified, diseases will occur from time to time. For this reason BIMCO has chosen to develop a set of comprehensive and clearly worded generic clauses for voyage and time charter parties that can be applied not only to the Novel Corona virus outbreak but to other similar virulent diseases that may occur in the future.
BIMCO has decided to start labelling all versions of its standard clauses with the year of publication, including the original edition, with the aim to reduce disputes over which version parties have agreed to.
Technical, regulatory and financial aspects of the 2020 global fuel sulphur cap regime understandably loom large in people’s minds. But the importance of the contractual dimension should not be overlooked. BIMCO is forging ahead with an all-encompassing 2020 Clause for charter parties, which should be published in November.
In October 2009 BIMCO initiated a project to develop a suite of standard bunker clauses for use in time charter parties. The rationale behind developing the suite is simply to address the ever increasing importance of bunker issues in time charter parties and the need to ensure that the risk of bunker disputes is minimised by clearly worded clauses that reflect legislative developments. The Suite of Clauses was adopted by BIMCO’s Documentary Committee at its meeting in Vancouver in June 2011. The Suite provides clauses covering matters relating to delivery/redelivery bunkers; bunkering operations; sampling; fuel testing programmes; and ECA trading, all of which are matters that are frequently absent from or insufficient in many standard time charter parties. Many older time charter forms contain bunker clauses covering the fundamental principles under the charter, but simply do not contemplate today’s situation where vessels are required to carry and use several grades of fuel and where sampling and testing regimes are an integral part of the process.
