Logistics News | WSC: Increase in Containers Lost

Author Name: Tiffany Lee – Marketing Analyst at FreightAmigo｜12/7/2022

According to 2022 World Shipping Council (WSC) Containers Lost at Sea report, showing that container lost has been growing in the past 2 years. An international liner with 6300 carrier ships delivered vital supplies worth $7 trillion globally in 2021. This involved approximately 241 million containers. However, over the past two years, there was an average of 1,629 containers lost at sea, an increase of 18% per year since the start of the survey. Although containers lost overboard represent less than 0.001%, the loss of one single container can result in high insurance claim costs.

Every container lost is a big loss from the standpoint of the logistics industry, so shipping companies constantly collaborate with other parties in the supply chain to reduce containers lost. However, despite the crew’s great efforts and the consolidation of the container ship, it has been challenging to anticipate unexpected situations that could result in containers lost, such as extreme weather, ship grounding, ship collisions, etc. During the winter of 2020-2021, weather-related occurrences were particularly frequent. Average containers lost was more than 3,113 in those two years, 2,334 more than during the previous period. In 2020, when The ONE Apus was on the way to Long Beach, California when it lost an estimated 1,816 containers overboard in heavy weather, which resulted in a loss over millions of US dollars.

The “MARIN Top Tier” project was started by WSC, and its member shipping companies to strengthen container safety because of the rise in container lost. The project will last for three years and use scientific evaluations, studies, desktop measurements, and actual measurements and data collection, to create and publish concrete, practical suggestions. This project is expecting to lower the danger of containers lost overboard. Along with this project, WSC and its member companies are actively engaged in the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) guidelines for the inspection programs for cargo transport units and increased the frequency of its Containers Lost at Sea report.

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