Lauri Railas signing ceremony of the General Conditions of the Nordic Freight Forwarders

In this picture, Lauri signs on behalf of the Finnish users of freight forwarding services in the signing ceremony of the 2015 version of General Conditions of the Nordic Freight Forwarders. The set of general conditions, abbreviated NSAB 2015, is an agreed document (meaning that the contents have been negotiated between suppliers and buyers of services to find a balance) having a history of a hundred years. Freight forwarders in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden being members of the local associations of this field of business adhere to these General Conditions. The predecessor of NSAB 2015, the NSAB 2000, also found use in the logistics services of the Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

The revision of the NSAB was triggered by the expanding scope of the tasks of freight forwarders as these are no longer confined to the transportation of the goods only, or to related storages and customs clearance, but also include cooperation in the production, distribution, assembly or packaging of the goods. The performance of these additional tasks has received fancy names such as third party logistics (3PL). It is evident that information logistics plays an ever-increasing role in modern freight forwarding. Therefore, NSAB 2015 covers that area for the first time now.

The liability under various modes of transport is covered by mandatory international conventions. Usually, the carriage of goods takes place through various modes of transport and thereby crosses different liability regimes. Therefore, the liability regime is based on the so called network liability principle referring to the particular rules in each mode of transport.  However, there are liability provisions in the NSAB 2015 not affected by transport conventions, for example with regard to negligence in the customs clearance. The liability limits of the freight forwarder have been raised and the possibilities of the freight forwarders to exonerate themselves from liability have been reduced. Nevertheless, freight forwarders should still be able to obtain insurance with decent prices to cover their liability. Hopefully, the new instrument will further add trust in the field of logistics between the suppliers and users.