BIMCO Publishes ‘Just in Time Arrival Clause for Voyage Charter Parties 2021’

The Problem

Voyage charterparties generally require owners to prosecute voyages with due or utmost despatch and without deviation. In practice, this frequently leads to a costly consumption of bunkers to arrive at the destination expeditiously, only to find the vessel spends significant periods of time at the port awaiting its turn to berth.

This is an unhappy scenario for everyone. Owners will have the high cost of the bunkers consumed on the voyage and additional running costs at port. Charterers will likely end up paying demurrage. And the port’s facilities and resources are burdened, while carbon emissions concentrate in the local area from the queue.

The Solution?

BIMCO’s ‘Just in Time Arrival Clause 2021’ envisages the sharing of information between all parties to enable the vessel to berth immediately on its arrival, or with minimal waiting time. It allows the owners and charterers to adjust the vessel’s speed to meet this goal, while including a mechanism to apportion fairly the cost of the extra voyage time against the savings in fuel consumption. Importantly, it also promotes vessel and port utilisation, while minimising emissions.

Final Thought

Given the ongoing focus on sustainability and demand for voyage optimisation and emission reduction, we anticipate seeing this ‘win-win’ clause as a regular feature of voyage charterparties going forward and would encourage both owners and charterers to give it careful consideration.

More information may be found at: Just in Time Arrival Clause for Voyage Charter Parties 2021 (bimco.org)