The Container Ship Safety Forum e.V. (CSSF) is an international industry association and global business-to-business network, established in 2014. The CSSF is dedicated to improving safety performance and management practices in the container shipping industry.
The shipping industry transports more than one third of the value of global trade, providing more than 4 million jobs, and faces a host of regulations and stakeholder expectations for safe operations.
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Vision. The Vision of Container Ship Safety Forum (CSSF) is a container shipping industry with high safety standards ensuring no harm is caused to people, ships, cargo and the environment.
Mission. CSSF members collaborate to advance the continuous improvement of safety culture and performance in the container shipping industry through measurement, reporting and benchmarking, sharing best practices and engaging with key stakeholders to develop durable solutions.
Anti Trust Statement. The policy of the CSSF and its Members is to conduct all of its activities in strict compliance with all applicable anti-trust and competition laws, in order to facilitate legitimate pro-competitive and other activities that help advance the objectives of the initiative. It is therefore against the policy of CSSF to sponsor, encourage or tolerate any discussion, communication, information sharing or agreement that would violate applicable anti-trust or competition laws.
Ordinary Membership is open for companies that hold a Document of Compliance (DOC) for managing fully cellular container vessels, where this forms a significant part of their business. Ordinary Members form the core of the CSSF and drive its direction and governance.
They benefit from:
Associated Membership is open to selected organisations that support CSSF’s purpose and bring relevant expertise or perspectives to the forum. This include NGOs, classification societies, insurers, researchers, and safety solution providers.
Associated Members contribute in an advisory capacity and are invited to participate in selective meetings, committees, or working groups. They do not have voting rights or access to confidential information.
Organisations interested in joining CSSF as members are welcome to reach out to the Secretariat for further information and application details.
The Vision of Container Ship Safety Forum (CSSF) is
a container shipping industry with high safety standards ensuring
no harm is caused to people, ships, cargo and the environment.
CSSF members collaborate through measurement, reporting and benchmarking, sharing best practices and engaging with key stakeholders to develop durable solutions.
To improve container safety and reduce operational risk, CSSF calls for verified gross mass (VGM) to be independently verified before loading.
download the guide at the end of the article
download the paper at the end of the article
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The Container Ship Safety Forum (CSSF) has published a new position paper calling for independent third-party verification of Verified Gross Mass (VGM) as a critical step toward safer and more reliable container operations.
While SOLAS regulations have required declared VGM since 2016, the current system relies heavily on shipper self-declarations, often without independent control. Incident investigations has shown that a significant share of containers are loaded with incorrect weight information, contributing to poor stowage planning, stability issues, stack collapses, and container losses at sea.
In its position paper, the CSSF calls on stakeholders to work toward scalable, neutral verification processes, and to harmonize enforcement practices across jurisdictions.
For further information, please contact secretariat@cssf.global
This new Guide to Safe Container Ship Operations is a strong indication of the CSSF’s commitment to continued improvement in safety. It objectively sets out the practices and procedures associated with safe container ship operations. These practices and procedures are meant to be challenging – but, having said that, in the vast majority of instances they are already being pursued by the CSSF’s members.
This Guide is not an inspection or audit checklist, nor is it a self-assessment document, and it is not intended to be a measure by which stakeholders may measure or compare one company with another. It is a living document that is expected to be periodically updated to reflect changing standards, requirements and expectations. The practices and procedures described in this guide can be successfully implemented – indeed, everything included in this guidance has been used and has helped to achieve desired improvements.
The CSSF believes that the container ship companies which work towards the successful implementation of the practices described will indeed achieve improved safety and performance standards.
The Guide to Safe Container Ship Operations is limited in its scope to personal and operational safety. The document does not include security, environmental or crew welfare issues except where there are direct safety implications.
The members of the Container Ship Safety Forum represent a diverse mix of container operations and as such recognise that Companies have different safety management objectives and different management systems. To support that this guidance document is intended to help container ship owners, operators and managers develop their own procedures that fit in with and compliment their own company cultures and management systems.
It is intended to be ambitious and help raise safety standards within the container sector but it is not intended to contain prescriptive procedures or instructions and should not be used in that way.
The members of CSSF are highly concerned about the many cargo fires onboard container ships originating from commodities that are carried inside the containers.
For the CSSF it is unacceptable that seafarers have to be concerned about their lives and wellbeing while doing their job due to dangerous cargo which is not managed responsibly by manufacturers, shippers and other parties in the supply chain.
Fire-fighting activities have one of the highest residual risks on board container ships and further mitigation is required both by developing preventive as well as resilience capacity in the supply chain and onboard vessels.
The CSSF does not want to be recognized as an extra regulator by setting new rules in addition to the existing ones, but wants to encourage with this paper Industry position on addressing container ship cargo fires all parties involved to look beyond minimum regulatory requirements.
The Container Ship Safety Forum e.V. is governed by the Member Meeting and by a member-elected Management Board. The current Management Board consists of First Chairman Søren Thuen (DPA & Head of Safety, Nautical & Assurance, Maersk A/S) and Second Chairman Swapnodeep Mondal (Group Director, Operations, Anglo-Eastern Ship Management Ltd.).
Further, the CSSF e.V. has contracted a Secretariat for administration and management tasks. The Secretariat is operated by Claas-Heye Diekmann and Runa A. Skarbø of ACG Azure Campfire GmbH, located in Hamburg, Germany.
Both the Management Board and the Secretariat can be contacted using the form below.
Organisations interested in joining CSSF as members are welcome to reach out to the Secretariat for further information and application details.
First Chairman Søren Thuen (DPA & Head of Safety, Nautical & Assurance, Maersk A/S)
Second Chairman Swapnodeep Mondal (Group Director, Operations, Anglo-Eastern Ship Management Ltd.).
