BILL OF LANDING (B/L) is a proof that goods are shipped or received by ocean transport contract or carrier, carrier agrees that he/she will turns over the goods for exchange with this bill.

B/L plays a role as a proof of ocean transport contract, also as document to receive cargo with the quantity, weight and the condition of the goods as on B/L.
Most importantly, B/L is a document of title which itself means cargo. A person withholds this B/L has right for anspruch to an ocean carrier who keeps and possesses the cargo, also disposition right for the cargo.
Thus B/L needs to be issued as original for bank collateral in L/C transaction.
The original B/L consists of 3 pieces as a set, and in case of the original B/L was issued, the original has to be submitted for taking over the cargo to carrier.
Yet, the time for transport is getting shorter due to development of transportation, B/L has limitation in case of cargo arrives before a consignee receives the original.

SURRENDERED B/L is submitted when an importer submits the original B/L to shipping company and requests turning out the cargo to consignee due to the cargo arrives at imported country before the shipper receives the original B/L and sent it to the importer in imported country.

When T/T payment method used, shipper does not submit the B/L to the bank but directly does it to consignee, in this case, usually B/L SURRENDER happens.

L/C is a conditional payment commitment that the bank promises to pay when documents that same as L/C are submitted. Other parties other than contract parties do not know about the condition of L/C transaction, the banks can not make decision on whether corresponding goods are delivered or not due to lack of knowledge for trading, thus, L/C needs to be independent from sales contract to protect the banks based on principal of independence.

Therefore, the implement of contract is judged based on documents. Clause 14.b in Uniform customs and practice for documentary credit says the banks that received L/C decide whether the documents comply with the conditions of L/C or not solely based on documents. The banks can reject to pay only if the content of documents does not comply with the condition of L/C. In this way, the bank which does not have the knowledge about trading can be protect and play its role in the transaction by holding strict compliance policy.

The bank judges L/C strictly with substantial effort according to international standard banking practice, but there is no detailed criteria describing about what substantial compliance is. In other words, it is better to be accurate on contents of documents and conditions of L/C to prevent payment rejection and claim even though there is some issues between substantial compliance and strict compliance.

Ton of weight and ton of volume for ocean freight called revenue ton, and this is about whether the cargo is applied ton of weight or ton of volume, the bigger one is applied for the freight between these two. The weight applied cargoes which is heavy but relatively small are usually steel, machine and metal goods.

These goods called weight cargo and the freight calculated based on the weight is weight freight. Most of the tume, 1000kg is used as a basic unit for weight cargo, also called METRIC TON. On the other hand, high volume goods compare to weight calculated based on its volume, and this kind good is called volume cargo.

1CBM is a basic unit for the volume cargo for regular cargo.