The latest America Focus article, providing guidance in preventing cargo abandonment, has been updated. The article now includes a link to a website that is more user friendly than the CCC website, and free of charge to use. The newly recommended website also has a search facility saving users from having to scroll through lists to find results.

Shipping lines are increasingly having shipments of low value cargo (wastepaper and scrap plastic) shipped from the US and abandoned by the cargo receivers at the discharge port. The cargo can sit idle for several months while shippers and consignees negotiate, or shipping lines take it upon themselves to try to find a new buyer for the cargo.

This results in tens of thousands of dollars in accumulating demurrage costs, several shipping line containers out of circulation not generating revenue, and tens of thousands of dollars in freight charges to return the cargo to the origin. If no new buyer is found, and the shipper has gone out of business, the shipping line must pay to dispose of the cargo. It is also likely the ocean freight was not paid adding to the losses.

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