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As you know, earlier this year, the Verification of the Gross Mass (VGM) of packed containers became mandatory.
From what I've seen and heard, it was relatively painless in Australia. The reason for this was because we took the PRA which is mandatory for all container exports, and added new fields for the shipper to enter the VGM info.
Just like email addresses or phone number fields on other forms you'd fill out, the VGM field requires that the person entering the info has entered it correctly. In this case, the shipper is ultimately responsible for supplying the correct information. Even so, 1-Stop can assist.
How? Similar to how we check that the "@" symbol is present when you type in an email address, we can do something like that for the VGM field.
We are going to check the VGM value.
From October onwards, we will check if the VGM entered is greater than the tare weight of an empty container. If it's not, the PRA won't be accepted. If you use our webform, you'll see this warning:
If you send PRAs from your own software, you'll receive this rejection message:
ERA0612 The Container Verified Gross Weight must be greater than the Container Tare Weight
The change will be applied at the end of this month. We expect that this will prevent any accidental errors of mistakenly putting 2.0 tonne instead of 20.0 tonne for the VGM.
Talk soon,
Cam Tran
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