Maersk updates on lost containers incident

Maersk has provided further details on the lost containers incident. It occurred on a chartered-in boxship in the North Pacific on Monday.

Incident

Many lost containers, found in the North Pacific, SE of Kamchatka on Mar 20. Later it has become known, that containers lost by the containership DYROS, while en route from Yantian China to Seattle. The ship continued her voyage, at 1400 UTC was sailing south of Unalaska Island, Alaska.

Details

Particularly, some 90 containers fell off the 4,506TEU vessel. This was while on charter from Costamare when it hit stormy conditions to the south of Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula. Note that, 9 of the boxes that fell overboard classify as dangerous cargo, containing lithium-ion batteries. A further 100 containers approximately got damages, while the vessel’s deck is in need of repairs. Fortunately, there were no crew injuries during the box spill incident.

The ship has changed destinations and rather than arriving at Seattle on Sunday as originally planned, it will head for Port of Lazaro Cardenas, on Mexico’s Pacific coast, scheduled to arrive on April 3.

Container spills

A similar box spill incident on another Maersk ship last year saw the Danish company opt to head to the same Mexican port, where sister firm APM Terminals has a concession.

The North Pacific has been the scene of many box spills over the past couple of years resulting in insurance claims to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

A report, released in 2020, showed that in the most recent period between 2017 and 2019, an average of 779 shipping containers lost at sea annually.

Since containers are being stacked high, the ships are becoming even more top-heavy, meaning that in bad weather they are likely to be shuffled and jolted around, making it inevitable that they will fall off their vessels.

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