World Shipping Council published its 2020 survey concerning containers lost at sea issue. The report reveals that on average a total of 1.382 containers lost at sea every year.
In fact, WSC highlights that the international liner shipping industry transported approximately 226 million containers, with cargo transported valued at more than $4 trillion.
Based on the survey results, in the first period (2008-2010), total losses averaged 675 per year and then quadrupled to an average of 2.683 in the next period (2011-2013).
This was due in large part to the sinking of the MOL Comfort (2013) that resulted in a loss of 4.293 containers and further impacted by the grounding and loss of M/V Rena (2011) resulting in approximately 900 containers lost.
Fortunately, there have not been such significant losses in a single incident reported since.
During the next period of 2014-2016, was marked another vessel sinking, the tragic total loss of the SS El Faro (2015) with the loss of 33 crew members and 517 containers.
Following the 2017-2019 period, the annual loss was almost halved again to 779. There were no individual losses as significant as those noted in the previous periods, which is a welcome development.
However, 2018 and 2019 were marked with a few incidents that each lost more than 100 containers.
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