Major shipping carriers unite to improve safety of cargo

Some of the world’s biggest maritime cargo carriers are joining forces with the world’s first industrial safety technology accelerator to launch a new innovation initiative to reduce cargo loss at sea.

Evergreen Line, HMM, Maersk, the Offen Group, ONE (Ocean Network Express), Seaspan as well as Lloyd’s Register are joining forces with Safetytech Accelerator to find and advance technology innovations from across maritime and other industrial sectors to reduce the incidence and impact of cargo fires or cargo loss overboard.

The scale and breadth of the challenges facing operators is growing and continues to evolve.

The Initiative has a broad scope encompassing three significant topics of concern. The first relates to onboard cargo control, including whether cargo has been properly, loaded, secured and monitored during transit. The second area covers the ability to detect fire onboard and stop its spread through effective onboard response, particularly on large container ships and car-carriers. The third relates to the challenges created by the increasing scale of vessels.

Global Containerships Segment Director at Lloyd’s Register (LR), and Chair of the Maritime Cargo Fire and Loss Initiative, Nick Gross said,” From LR side, the objective of the initiative resonates with our mandate to improve the safety of ships and crew, as well as protect the marine ecosystem. We believe it is vital to work together to tackle the increasing risk of cargo fires onboard container ships.”

The Managing Director of Safetytech Accelerator, Maurizio Pilu, said, “Safeytech Accelerator’s mission is to help solve some of the most complex safety, risk and resilience challenges in industry through open innovation and collaboration. Eliminating cargo fire and loss is a big challenge in the maritime industry and while accidents are thankfully infrequent, their impact can be extremely large. Together with the Anchor Partners we hope this new collaborative technology acceleration initiative will help industry make significant progress towards that goal.”