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IATA urges lithium crackdown, criminalise offences, says Air Canada

THE International Air Transport Association (IATA) is urging governments to play a greater role in overseeing battery manufacture as the April 1 ban approaches, reports London's Loadstar.

Air Canada Cargo chief Lise-Marie Turpin, and chairwoman of IATA's Cargo Committee, said: "We need to encourage states to criminalise any misdeeds related to lithium batteries. "It will take time, so in the meantime we will share incidence reporting and push the battery industry to find better packaging. ICAO has been quite clear it will lift the ban if the packaging is improved," she said.

The ocean freight industry has come up with a solution to help find misdeclared dangerous goods via technology, which potentially could be adapted for the needs of the air freight industry.

"We are taking two actions," said IATA cargo chief Glyn Hughes. "We are increasing our ability to track incidents - at the moment we are only hearing about them anecdotally, so there may be many more we don't know about. And we will discover serial offenders who wilfully send batteries without complying with regulations."

Recently, a consignment of lithium batteries, declared as batteries within appliances which can be shipped, was found after arriving at an airport in bellyhold. While the law has not yet come into effect, the airline in question has its own embargo on the freight.

"When the ban comes in these situations won't stop,?said Mr Hughes. "It's imperative that states play a role."

German shipping giant Hapag-Lloyd's intelligent software uses a database of more than 6,000 keywords to identify conspicuous terms and word combinations in declarations. If the so-called 'watchdog" barks, the dangerous goods team check the consignment.

Last year the system detected 2,620 cases of incorrectly declared dangerous goods.