Issuing Bill of Lading

Bill of Lading or B/L is one of the transport document that is issued by a carrier or their agent or forwarder. Bill of Lading is the title documents that pointing the owner of the goods and each shipment by sea will has a Bill of lading. You can find the rule for Bill of Lading in UCP. Today the latest version of UCP is UCP600.

Before Bill of Lading is issued up, shipper will send a shipping booking or shipping instruction to forwarder or sometimes directly to shipping line. On the shipping instruction sheet shown the shipment data that will be used by forwarder for booking the space in a vessel. The fastest on sending this shipping instruction will keeping you on getting the space in a vessel more possible. The contents of a B/L will follow to the data stated on the sipping booking. Mostly, shippers send the proforma shipping booking which is containing an estimation only. Then in the event that the shippers have finished their production they will send the final shipping booking or final data to be inputted to the bill of lading by forwarder. The sending of this actual data commonly do on the injury time or close to the closing time of sending data. But, of course, sending the final data earlier is the better, especially for shipment to Japan. At this time our forwarder asked us to send the final data far away from the closing date, because if the shipment data is missing it can makes the container will not be loaded to the vessel.

The types of bill of lading that I have ever used are consisting ocean bill of lading, non negotiable sea waybill, and surrendered bill of lading. For exporting to Europe Union, the importers mostly use ocean bill of lading or bill of lading and Forwarder Cargo Receipt. 

Buyers or importers from Japan are usually use the surrendered bill of lading. They actually don't need an original bill of lading once they do the clearance of the goods, because the surrendered B/L that is sent by email or fax  is enough to do the clearance. I think the surrendered B/L is suitable for shipment from Indonesia to Japan that having about ten days sailing date, this short sailing date will take to a problem if they request an original bill of lading, because shippers need several days at least seven days to get the original bill of lading, possibility goods arrived before buyer getting the bill of lading from shipper, then the additional fee of storage will coming up to buyer.

Bill of lading contents :

• Shipper. Shipper will arrange the shipment booking and provides the data for each shipment and shipper also collecting all shipping documents to pass away to buyer or consignee.
• Consignee. Consignee is party of receiver for the goods that are shipped. Occasionally, the transport documents will be sent to them for clear the goods.
• Notify party. This party of bill of lading may same with consignee or sometimes is different with consignee. 
• Vessel name and its voyage. This will be shown on the forth column. For exportation to far away from Indonesia that the port origin is Indonesia, for instance to Europe or USA, two vessel will be typed on bill of lading, because the shipment used two vessel, first vessel is used from Indonesia to transit port and the second vessel is used from transit port to final port.
• Mark or shipping mark, container number and its seal. These data is showed at behind the left of the description of the goods. For LCL shipment type the container number and its seal data will be provided by consolidator of forwarder as the stuffing or loading the goods to the container do by consolidator or forwarder. Differently, FCL shipment, shipper will arrange the loading of the goods to the container, so that the container and seal number are provided by shipper. The shipping mark is always provided by shipper.
• Description of goods. Buyer will provides the description of goods for each order. This usually can be found on purchase order sheet.
• Nett weight and gross weight. Shipper will provides both data and pass to forwarder or shipping line to insert to bill of lading.
• Total container number and size and type.
• Place and date of issue. This date is usually same with the boarding date, but sometimes both date of issue and boarding date are different.
• Type of movement. This data are refer to loading type to the container. CFS/CFS movement will be shown if in one container consists two or more shippers and consists two or more buyer are included. CY/CY movement, means that in one container is used by one shipper only and containing one buyer. CFS/CY, if this type movement is showed on a bill of lading, means that the container are containing two or more shipper and only one buyer is included.
• Freight payable at. This is pointing to who is obligated to pay the freight.

All above data types have to follow instruction from buyer or the Letter of Credit.