Your Chocolate or Confectionery Shipment Melted at Sea. How Do You Prove Who Is Responsible?

Chocolate, confectionery and other temperature-sensitive cargo travel almost exclusively in refrigerated containers, and the margin for error is small: a few hours outside the required temperature range, or a stowage decision that exposes the container to direct heat, can be enough to melt, bloom or otherwise ruin the shipment.

When a claim is made, the first question is rarely disputed — the cargo arrived damaged. The question that decides liability is why: was the container itself faulty, was the temperature setting wrong, did the carrier stow it improperly, or did the cargo have a pre-existing weakness that no amount of correct handling could have prevented?

Every reefer container fitted with a data logger records its own temperature history for the entire voyage. That record is usually the single most important piece of evidence in a chocolate or confectionery cargo claim — it can show a sustained excursion outside the agreed range, a total power failure, or, just as often, a temperature history that stayed within range throughout, which shifts the inquiry toward the condition of the cargo before loading.

Carriers facing such claims typically raise one of four defenses recognized under Egyptian and international carriage law: that the damage resulted from an inherent vice in the cargo itself, that the shipper stowed or packed the cargo improperly, that the loss was caused by a peril of the sea beyond the carrier’s control, or that the carrier exercised due diligence to make the vessel and its equipment seaworthy before and at the start of the voyage.

For cargo interests, the practical priority on discovering damage is to secure the data logger record and the vessel’s own reefer log before either can be disputed or go missing, and to have the cargo surveyed promptly — the strength of a chocolate or confectionery claim is decided far more by this contemporaneous evidence than by the extent of the visible damage itself.

Prepared by: Cargo & Customs Department – Soliman Advocates