Two major UK maritime insurers, the UK P&I Club and TT Club, became members of the Cargo Fire & Loss Innovation Initiative (CFLII) by Safetytech Accelerator.
The UK P&I Club and TT Club are the first insurers to join the Initiative. CFLII is already supported by Anchor Partners COSCO Shipping Lines, Evergreen Line, HMM, Lloyd’s Register, Maersk, the Offen Group, ONE and Seaspan, which represent around 50% of the total liner shipping market.
The Initiative has a broad technology scope, encompassing three topics of concern:
- Onboard cargo control, including whether cargo has been properly loaded, secured and monitored during transit.
- Onboard fire, the ability to rapidly detect fires and prevent propagation through effective onboard response, particularly on cargo vessels such as container ships and car-carriers.
- Challenges created by the increasing scale of vessels.
The Initiative, launched in February 2023, is a multi-year collaborative technology acceleration programme focused on reducing cargo fires and loss in maritime and its impact.
A large proportion of these fires are completely preventable, and we find that losses could have been mitigated by better practices. This is an industry-wide problem that requires collaboration.
… commented Stuart Edmonston, Loss Prevention Director at UK P&I Club
As an insurer of many elements of the container supply chain, we have long campaigned for improved certainty for classification, declaration and packing of cargo in containers. We look forward to engaging with fellow partners to improve safety and certainty of outcome in the supply chain.
… supplied Mike Yarwood, Managing Director of Loss Prevention at TT Club
The programme will help expedite the uptake of technology and best practice by identifying specific opportunities where technology can make a difference, shaping joint requirements, identifying technology solutions, undertaking trials and developing best practices and recommendations. It has already started working on solution for early fire detection in cargo hold.
I’m very excited to have UK P&I and TT Club join CFLII, now bringing in the insurer’s perspective to our work with the other anchor partners, to combat the risk of cargo fires and to make container shipping safer and more sustainable.
… said Global Containerships Segment Director at Lloyd’s Register (LR), and Chair of the Maritime Cargo Fire and Loss Initiative, Nick Gross
Rich McLoughlin, CFLII Programme Director at Safetytech Accelerator stated that they believe cross-industry collaboration around innovation is an essential component to reduce the incidence of large cargo fires and enhance the safety of seafarers and vessels. Together with the Anchor Partners, they are already uncovering technologies and applications that have the potential to make significant progress to that goal.
