An Ocean Network Express (ONE) operated boxship has suffered a container stack collapse in the North Atlantic while en route to the US.
The incident aboard the 13,900-teu Madrid Bridge (built 2018) occurred on 7 January while it was heading for its next port of call in New York.
The Japanese-flagged vessel, which is managed out of Singapore by K Line, was operating on ONE’s East Coast 4 service at the time of the casualty.
AIS data shows the vessel stationary in position 35° 58’ 01 N, 029° 55’ 28 W.
“Our immediate priorities are to ensure the safety of the crew, the vessel and the cargo on board. Delays to the vessel’s schedule are expected,” ONE said in a customer advisory.
The Singapore-based shipowner said investigations into the incident are ongoing and further information will be provided once available.
The Jeremy Nixon-led company did not provide any further details as to the scale of the stack collapse or if any containers had been lost overboard.
The liner industry suffered several high-profile container stack collapses in the winter of 2020/2021 including on the 14,052-teu ONE Apus (built 2019), which lost nearly 1,900 containers in November 2020.
That was believed to be the largest loss of containers ever attributable to bad weather and the largest single such incident for many years.
TradeWinds recently reported that claims filed in US federal courts following the ONE Apus cargo loss have surpassed $13m.
In its annual report last year, the UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) raised large container ship safety as an issue for the shipping industry.
MAIB identified weather routing and parametric rolling as causes of the container collapse in one casualty it investigated.
The agency also mentioned container storage standards and inaccurate declaration of container weight as contributory factors.
