With the arrival of the new ADR (road) and IATA (air) regulations this month, there is more information available on the many changes that will be implemented from 1st January 2025 onwards.

In addition to 11 new UN numbers, there are significant changes across the regulations to packing instructions, marking, and labelling:

Infectious Substances

For those involved with the shipment of infectious substances, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has amended the indicative list of Category A pathogens, and there have also been some adjustments to packing instruction (PI) 650 which covers the shipment of UN 3373 Biological Substance, Category B. PI 650 is the same packing instruction number for road, sea and air, but the contents of the packing instruction are not the same. If you’re a regular shipper of infectious and biological substances we will be summarising some of the key changes in greater detail in a future blog post. Follow us on LinkedIn to stay up to date.

Packing instruction 200

There have been several changes to packing instruction 200 which covers the shipment of gases for all methods of transport. The requirements and quantity limits for each mode of transport differ.

Data Loggers

The use of data loggers and cargo tracking devices (typically lithium battery powered), for shipments by air, has been made simpler. Often used to maintain temperature sensitive shipments or track highly valuable goods, operator approval is currently needed to use them in air transport. From 1st January 2025, so long as the lithium metal content remains below 1g, data loggers will be able to be used without approval.

Battery Mark

The lithium battery mark will be called the battery mark in future as this means the same mark can also be applied to sodium ion batteries. There are also a raft of changes to lithium batteries including an extension to the state of charge rules. We summarised these in an article for The Loadstar last year, available to read here.

We are still going through the new regulations and will be explaining the changes in much more detail on our Dangerous Goods Update Seminars. Some dates are already fully booked, but we have added additional seminars, so there are still plenty of options available.