Why Shipping Lithium-Ion Batteries Has Become Increasingly Complex
Lithium-ion. You may be tired of hearing this word, and I am as well, but it is front and center in our universe right now. This has become a real bear in our industry. Shipping them, declaring them, and differing rules among business lines are all playing a role in this becoming a very real challenge as well as an incredibly time-consuming task as we pore over inventories on every move.
The Challenge of Changing Carrier Regulations and Compliance Requirements
One of the issues is that there are so many products now that contain them, and the manufacturers who make and sell them are not necessarily concerned with how we get them from point A to point B. Tesla wants to sell electric vehicles, battery backups, and robots; they are less concerned with making safety data sheets available to the public, and even if they offer advice on how to ship, any ocean or air carrier can change the rule to not accept them on a moment’s notice. As a carrier, that is very hard; we may think we can ship something at the time of booking, only to find that three weeks later a line we were going to use now does not allow them, and that gives the appearance that we are the ones who don’t know how to do our job.
Maersk Launches a Dedicated Lithium-Ion Battery Freight Service
I was intrigued this week by this article from SUPPLYCHAINDIVE to see that Maersk has launched a dedicated lithium-ion freight service within North America. Specific to the above concerns, their head of Ground Freight Operations, Bob Livingston, said, “The energy transition isn’t just about what powers a vehicle — it’s about the entire supply chain behind it.” Further, the article points out that battery manufacturing production has increased 140% between 2020 and 2025 and that these batteries are regulated as hazardous class 9 materials due to the fire risk.
What Maersk’s New Service Means for Freight Forwarders
The service is limited and has strict rules about state of charge as well as documentation and declaration rules, but it’s a start. More importantly for us as freight forwarders is that they plan to extend the build-out to their ocean and air logistics operations.
