The regulator was my weapon - a tale from the vault

The time I bested Coca-Cola Amatil (unproven lore) is one of my favourite tales from the vault.

Cast your mind back to 2016, Mt Franklin had released a new bottle shape, it had a waist, easier to grip.

Around this same time, AMSA was doing a roadshow about the SOLAS VGM new legislation (verified gross mass to those playing at home).

Overweight containers were a scourge on the industry, underweight containers led to stack collapses. It was chaos and stress all around.

Some countries went hard, the UK were threatening a two year prison sentence. Singapore, much more pragmatic. Fines were the name of the game.

Enter Australia – fines for everyone (yes, the Oprah meme got thrown around a lot), Stevedore, Carrier, Shipper – everyone got pinged.

But how? Writing new legislation is annoying and time consuming. Enter the National Measurements Act 1960. As all good lawyers know, don’t reinvent the wheel, stand on the shoulders of those that came before.

As a shipping lawyer who oversaw the introduction of the SOLAS VGM internally within the carrier, I got very well acquainted with the NM Act. Also got well acquainted with the lack of public weighbridges in neighbouring countries but that’s by the by.

So my head was full of Method 1 and Method 2 and knowing that my cheese at the supermarket must be within x % of weight to be legally compliant.

One thing about me is, I have zero spatial skills. There is no estimating, there is weight and measuring or wildly inaccurate guesses.

One day, when doing a clean out, I saw my two Mt. Franklin bottles – one new, one old, standing side by side. And I thought… basic physics tells me that they can’t be the same volume and the same height if one has a skinny waist.

So I measured it.

And found it wanting.

One little tip off to the ACCC later and mysteriously the bottles vanished from the shelves. From the web. From all memory (except those who know this story).

Did I directly cause this? We’ll never know.

But the power of a regulator and the knowledge of the law, means I will always get what I paid for.

?-The Shipping Lawyer

p.s Have fun this weekend weighing your super market purchases, and then demanding satisfaction.?

If you're interested in learning more about how you can make your regulator "work" for you, drop a comment below or get in touch.