19 September 2016
BARGEHIRE is a bareboat charter party specifically designed for unmanned, non-self-propelled seagoing barges. It is a lease agreement whereby the charterer obtains possession and full control of the barge along with the legal and financial responsibility for it. The charterer generally pays for operating expenses such as maintenance and repairs but, unlike bareboat chartered ships, barges are often chartered with owner’s insurances made available to the charterer.
Copyright in BARGEHIRE 2008 is held by BIMCO.
07 January 2021
BIMCO has been busy updating BARGEHIRE 2008 and the project is close to completion. But before we finalise and publish the new edition in March, we would like to hear the views of barge owners, operators and charterers. Your comments and views received by 13 January 2021 will help shape a successful new BARGEHIRE. You can get a copy of the consultation draft from this news piece or by contacting contracts@bimco.org.
19 September 2016
The latest edition of this contract is BARGEHIRE 2008.
17 February 2020
Disagreements between owners and charterers over the cost of repairing damage to redelivered unmanned barges have prompted a review of BARGEHIRE 2008 to help reduce the risk of disputes.
23 January 2020
Tow wires on board tugs are expensive. If they break during an ocean towage operation, who should be responsible for repairing or replacing them? These and other issues were discussed in the latest meeting of the revision of BIMCO’s towage agreements TOWCON and TOWHIRE 2008.
29 May 2020
Under a conventional cargo time charter party, the right to suspend performance for non-payment of hire provides owners with a powerful commercial tool to leverage late hire payments. However, based on industry feedback, applying the same sanction under BARGEHIRE is impractical.
21 April 2020
SmartCon is the next generation of contract editing tools developed using the latest technology from Microsoft. We’ve built the editing features inside Word versions of our contracts to provide a seamless integration with the workflows of shipping professionals.