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The "Ever Given" got stuck in the Suez Canal and only arrived in Rotterdam after a long delay
Photo: Sanne Derks / Getty Images
According to insurers, the corona pandemic will increase the security risks for global shipping for the foreseeable future.
The trend towards ever larger ships also carries a risk, as demonstrated by the blockade of the Suez Canal by the container freighter "Ever Given", announced the Allianz ship insurer (AGCS).
The risk from Corona lies in delayed maintenance.
"We see an increase in the cost of hull damage and machine damage due to delays in the manufacture and delivery of spare parts," said Justus Heinrich, head of AGCS for Central and Eastern Europe.
The excessively long hours of service of the crews are also a problem, the crews have often not been replaced for months, said Leonburg.
"You don't work better, you make mistakes."
The blockade of the Suez Canal by the "Ever Given" in March shows that incidents with ever larger ships require complex and therefore expensive reactions, said Leonburg.
The transverse freighter with a capacity of 20,000 containers had blocked the bottleneck of world shipping for days.
Freight traffic between Europe and Asia was mixed up.
As the ships grow, so does the risk, because the average capacity of the freighters has doubled, but the capacity in the ports has remained the same.
This increases the risk of accidents, according to the report.
Container losses at sea also increased, with 3,000 containers being lost in 2020.
More pirate attacks off West Africa
The risk of pirate attacks has shifted in recent years from East Africa to the West African coast in the Gulf of Guinea.
In 2020, 130 crew members were abducted from 22 registered robberies, according to the report.
A total of 49 large ships with more than 100 tons were lost in the past year, in 2019 there were 48. The number of total losses, however, has fallen by about half in a decade, it said.
2703 registered ship accidents in 2020 meant a slight decrease of 4 percent compared to 2019. The ships were less on the move due to the pandemic.
According to the report, the largest number of total ship losses occurred in southern China and Indochina (16).
Most ship accidents (579), however, were recorded in the North Sea, British Isles and Biscay.
The busy shipping routes in western Europe have been in second place in terms of accident risk in a long-term comparison since 2011 - behind the eastern Mediterranean and ahead of southern China and the Baltic Sea.
hba / dpa