A Panamax boxship owned by MSC lost more than 40 empty containers during inclement weather, roughly 350 nautical miles east of Bermuda. The Bermuda Maritime Operations Center received notification from the MSC Shristi that the vessel lost a total of 46 containers during three different instances. The Liberian-flagged vessel, with a capacity of 4,738 TEU, was en route from Boston to the Dominican Republic.
The World Shipping Council (WSC), a Washington-based liner lobby group, began a three-year study last year following its report for 2020-2021, which revealed a rise in container losses at sea. The two-year average loss increased to 3,113 from 779 in the previous period. MSC has taken steps to minimize the risk of losing containers by contracting with the Norwegian classification society DNV to implement the Anti-Roll Assist system and ARCS class notation on approximately 100 ships.
The contract covers newly constructed ships, those currently in operation, and those yet to be constructed, ranging in size from 1,800 TEU to the largest vessels at around 24,000 TEU.
In addition to this incident, MSC faced another problem as one of its giant boxships, the MSC Istanbul with a capacity of 16,652 TEU, briefly broke down in the Suez Canal on Sunday. It was an uneasy week for the Geneva-based liner.
