by Lloyd's List

23 August 2024 (Lloyd's List) - WEATHER is the single most influential factor in vessels losing containers, mutual insurer TT Club  has found.

But while the shipping industry cannot control sailing conditions, more can be done to stop containers going overboard, the insurer said.

For example, terminal operating systems should place heavier containers lower in a deck stack.

Studies by TopTier, a project co-ordinated by Maritime Research Institute Netherlands involving the biggest container lines and class societies, found discrepancies of 20% in some cases between planned container stowage and actual stowage.

TT Club risk management director Peregrine Storrs-Fox said “this is itself alarming” if representative across the container sector.

Wave height might seem the obvious cause of box falls. But TT Club said its analysis showed wave length and period (the time it takes for two crests to pass a fixed point) were most important.

Wave period is responsible for parametric roll and synchronous roll, when the wave period matches a vessel’s natural rolling pattern. This can lead to stow collapses and losses.

The rerouting of vessels from the Red Sea to the Cape of Good Hope has exposed boxships to more extreme weather off southern Africa, TT Club said.

Malta-flagged, 2024-built, 13,000 teu CMA CGM Belem (IMO: 9938286) lost 99 containers off the South African coast just last week. That is nearly half of all the containers lost at sea in 2023.

TT Club said it was searching for solutions to the problems posed by weather, including ways to predict parametric roll and new lashing methods to reduce the movement of containers.