BIMCO Launches New eLearning Module on Voyage Chartering

After three years of continuous development and promotion, BIMCO’s eLearning programme is no longer a newly-emerged, unknown platform. It is as exciting as any other kinds of learning experience, if not more, by gathering comprehensive study material, thorough tutor’s support, peers from all over the world, case study and group work plus online teaching sessions etc and deliver it to our participants’ finger tips. Also, the entirely web-based courses offer great flexibility at a lower overall cost, which enables participants to handle their day-to-day jobs and study at the same time.

Hundreds of shipping professionals from 50 countries and 167 companies joining the programme, some of them two or more modules, is never a coincidence. Following on this success, a brand-new module on Voyage Chartering is in the pipeline, which will be launched in October 2014.

Taking the great complexity of voyage chartering into consideration, BIMCO’s new module will highlight important problem areas and explore ways in which parties attempt to allocate risk among themselves. Providing the participants with a balanced understanding of the relevant legal principles and practise, the module covers the following topics extensively:

• The nature of voyage charters
• Voyage charters and other trading and carriage contracts
• The negotiation and fixing of a voyage charter
• The shipowners’ duties to vessel, voyage and cargo
• The charterers’ duties to cargo, port and payment
• Laytime, demurrage and despatch
• Liens
• Defences to liability
• Limitation of liability
• Paramount clauses
• Law and jurisdiction.

Miaojia Liu, Chief Education Officer at BIMCO, said:

“We know that voyage chartering is a complex area for shipping and we’re delighted with the content we have prepared for our newest eLearning module.

“The feedbacks we have from past participants are positive and encouraging. We believe this new module will be a very welcome addition to our courses.

“We are very pleased that Lindsay East, known as one of the top lawyers in shipping, will make his 40-years’ expertise available for our participants and help them to explore and understand the complexities of voyage chartering.”

Source: BIMCO