The revised Unified Container Inspection & Repair Criteria (UCIRC) includes inspection criteria for container depots and other container handover facilities to address pest contamination on and in containers.
Particularly, in order to address the remaining issue of the integrity and cleanliness of the containers, Bureau International des Containers (BIC), the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) and the World Shipping Council (WSC) joined to ensure the UCIRC was adjusted to meet today’s requirements.
The revised UCIRC has been updated to make inspection for and removal of visible pest contamination an integral part of the container inspection and dispatch process. The document outlines special provisions to inspect for pest contamination at container depots as well as at all other interchange points.
The first edition of the Unified Container Inspection & Repair Criteria (UCIRC), designed for use at all container depots and container interchanges, was developed and published by ICS in 2000. However, the previous editions of UCRIC did not address inspection for visible pest contamination on the container, resulting in the possibility that containers might be dispatched empty from container depots with hitchhiker pests.
To tackle this issue, in late March, BIC, COA, IICL and WSC had also jointly issued updated guidelines for the cleaning of containers, providing easy-to-use best practices.
Source: Safety4sea
