How Much Can You Recover for a Damaged Chocolate or Confectionery Shipment? Understanding the Carrier's Limitation of Liability

Proving that a carrier is liable for a damaged chocolate or confectionery shipment is only the first half of the claim. The second, and often more consequential, question is how much can actually be recovered — because international and Egyptian carriage law generally caps a carrier’s liability regardless of the cargo’s real commercial value.

Egypt is a party to the Hamburg Rules, under which a carrier’s liability for cargo loss or damage is limited to 835 Special Drawing Rights (SDR) per package or shipping unit, or 2.5 SDR per kilogram of the damaged cargo’s gross weight, whichever is higher. For a high-value, low-weight cargo like chocolate or fine confectionery, this limitation can leave a shipper recovering only a small fraction of the goods’ actual invoice value.

There is one way to raise this limit before a dispute ever arises: declaring the true value of the cargo in the bill of lading and paying the corresponding higher freight, commonly known as Ad Valorem Freight. Once the value is declared and accepted by the carrier, the statutory limitation no longer applies, and the carrier’s liability is instead tied to the declared value. This step has to be taken at the time of shipment — it cannot be added retroactively once damage has already occurred.

Where the shipper did not declare a higher value, the more reliable route to full recovery is usually cargo insurance rather than a claim against the carrier. An insurer who has paid the shipper’s claim can, in turn, pursue the carrier directly through subrogation, and is not bound by the same commercial pressure to preserve the relationship with the carrier that a shipper often is.

For shippers regularly moving chocolate, confectionery or other high-value temperature-sensitive cargo, the practical lesson sits upstream of any dispute: deciding, at the time of booking, whether to pay for Ad Valorem Freight or to rely on cargo insurance is what ultimately determines whether a future claim recovers the goods’ real value or only the statutory minimum.

Prepared by: Cargo & Customs Department – Soliman Advocates