Issue Summary

The primary Intercargo issue concerns the Annual Trend of Bulk Carrier Casualties, which are reported on an annual basis to IMO.  However, there is also value in providing Members with a summary report of “Negative Performance Indicators” (NPI) to inform Members about Collisions, Groundings and other matters.  In 2009, there have been a significant number of casualties in the month of July, August and September. The casualty report for 2009 will be published with the Intercargo Benchmarking report in early April 2010 (and the casualty section will be available for download on this web page).

Intercargo Policy

Intercargo believes that reporting maritime casualties and NPIs should be made more transparent as the benefit of promulgating “lessons learnt” to the wider shipping community outweighs any legal consequences of withholding sensitive information.  The current role of the IMO in reporting such accidents is acknowledged and could perhaps be extended to incorporate a publicly accessible area of the website where Flag States could log reports of serious incidents. Owners could therefore make more informed choices as to potential registers based on whether a particular flag state conducted efficient and timely enquiries into significant casualties.

Summary of Recent Developments

The 2008 Intercargo Bulk Carrier Casualty Report was received by the IMO Maritime Safety Committee meeting MSC 86 in May 2009 (see download below).  This noted that four Dry Bulk vessels and 15 lives were lost in 2008 and that yet again, the losses pointed to a disproportionate number of smaller, older dry bulk vessels engaged on the intra-Asian trades. That the trend for these types of vessels on these types of trades remains significant, remains a cause for some concern.  We trust that no effort will be spared to investigate the causes including whether in some cases, whether the cargo itself contributed to the actual accident.

MSC 86/INF. 8 - Intercargo Casualty Report 2008 figures

2009 Casualty Report