3,000 containers were lost at sea in 3 months, and the insurance company could not stand it just lik

Marine insurers are putting pressure on carriers to improve the safety of container ships, according to the latest information. Cargo losses on these ships have increased since last year. The winter of 2020-2021 was especially bad.

about 3,000 containers were lost in the Pacific from November last year to March this year, costing insurance companies more than 100 million euros.

At no point before the Covid crisis have we seen such an amount of lost containers.

"We have to stop things from developing. The loss of containers endangers crews and ships, is costly, and pollutes the ocean," said Anya Käfer-Rohrbach, deputy chief executive of Gesamtverband der Deutschen Versicherungswirtschaft (GDV), a German insurance interest group. The International Unio of Marine Insurance (IUMI) is also looking at the issue.

In a December 2021 report, the group urged shipping lines to either take extra safety measures or reduce the number of containers.

According to the IUMI representative, maintaining the status quo is impossible. Insurers believe that the main factor in container losses compared to before the pandemic is the heavy loads on board.

“Before the Covid-19 crisis, we had never seen so many containers lost,” Uwe Schieder of GDV said at the IUMI anniversary event last September.

Before the pandemic, carriers were limited to no more than 80% of their capacity. After a dip at the start of the crisis, demand from the container shipping industry has grown substantially.

Containers falling into the water are not an uncommon phenomenon. The World Shipping Council (WSC) estimates that between 2008 and 2019, an average of 1,382 containers were lost each year.

Insurers believe recent losses have been larger than average and urgent action is needed.

“The fundamental problem is that the sailing characteristics of large container ships and the existing safety systems no longer match,” says Käfer-Rohrbach.

The new generation of giant ships is not only longer, but wider. In order to remain stable, the ship must be able to straighten itself quickly along a bank that can cause roll.

The insurance company commented: "Containers can be stacked up to 12 layers on the deck, so they are subjected to powerful forces, and the metal rods that keep the containers in position are not made for this chaos." And proposed a solution: the carrier must provide the ship Equipped with additional ballast tanks to limit roll. In addition, the insurance company required a modernization of the locking system to keep the containers in place.

Without these measures, in the short term, GDV believes that load reduction is the only option. This seems an unrealistic possibility, given the boom in the shipping industry and the severe shortage of capacity.