Block stowage

Block stowage is the practice of stowing all cargo for one shipper, one port, or one bill of lading together in a contiguous block within a hold or on deck. It speeds discharge because a single parcel comes out at its port without overstow from cargo bound elsewhere, and it limits the risk of shortage and mis-delivery. On container ships the same idea drives port grouping in the stowage plan to cut restows. The trade-off is that block stowage can leave broken stowage and lost cube when parcel shapes do not fill the compartment.