Cargo Inspections Reveal Rising Rate of Safety Deficiencies

One in Ten Shipments Flagged for Safety Issues

According to a report by The Maritime Executive, the World Shipping Council (WSC) has published a consolidated analysis of cargo inspection data from seven countries covering more than 93,000 inspections carried out in 2025. The findings show that deficiencies were identified in 9,645 of those inspections — a rate of 10.36 percent — and that this figure has been trending upward over the past several years.

The inspection reports were originally submitted to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) by Chile, Finland, Germany, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Republic of Korea, Sweden, and the United States. WSC stepped in to compile and publish the results after the IMO stopped issuing its own annual consolidated report in 2024, a gap the council says is now obscuring the industry’s overall safety picture.

What’s Going Wrong

The deficiencies uncovered span some of the most basic cargo safety obligations: incorrect documentation, poor marking and labelling, improper packing, and inadequate securing. WSC warns that these lapses raise the risk of cargo damage, container losses overboard, and shipboard fires.

The timing is notable. WSC’s data arrives against a backdrop of high-profile containership fires, including the vessel Wan Hai, which was destroyed in a 2025 blaze linked to cargo issues. The council also cited statistics from insurer Allianz indicating that a containership fire now occurs roughly every 17 days.

“Finding deficiencies in more than one in ten inspected units is far too high,” said Joe Kramek, President and CEO of the World Shipping Council. He described correct declaration, packing, securing, and marking as fundamental safety obligations, adding that failure to meet them puts lives at risk.

A Decade of Data Shows a Worsening Trend

Looking across the 2017–2025 period, WSC found the average deficiency rate sat above 9 percent, dipping to as low as 6.5 percent in 2020 and 7.4 percent in 2021 — years likely affected by reduced trade activity. Since then, the rate has climbed again, exceeding 11 percent in 2024, with the three-year average now at 10.9 percent.

WSC separately flagged weaknesses in enforcement of international dangerous goods rules, warning that containers are moving with undeclared lithium batteries on board. The group noted that global lithium-ion battery deployment in 2025 was six times higher than in 2020, according to the International Energy Agency, with demand expected to double again by 2030 — a trend that raises the stakes for undeclared battery cargo fires.

Reporting Gaps Undermine Oversight

Perhaps the most striking figure in the report is not the deficiency rate itself but the lack of participation behind it: only seven of the IMO’s more than 170 member states submitted container inspection results for 2025. Kramek stated plainly that states carry a responsibility to enforce cargo safety rules through effective inspection regimes, but the current reporting shows that most are not doing so, or at least not disclosing the results.

What This Means for Owners and Charterers

For ship owners, managers, and charterers, this data is a reminder that cargo-related risk often originates well before a container reaches the terminal — in packing sheds, freight forwarder offices, and shipper declarations that are never independently verified. With only a handful of flag and port states actively inspecting and reporting, vessel operators cannot assume that regulatory oversight alone will catch mis-declared or poorly secured cargo before it’s loaded. This strengthens the case for independent cargo hold and pre-loading inspections, particularly on strings known to carry high volumes of containerized dangerous goods or lithium battery shipments, where undeclared or mislabeled units remain a persistent blind spot. As the WSC data shows, the trend is moving in the wrong direction, and gaps in global reporting mean owners increasingly need their own verification measures rather than relying solely on port state statistics that may never be collected at all.

Reviewed by Ibrahim Halil Ceylan, Marine Surveyor at Apeks Marine.