ONE Apus Almost Ready to Leave Japan

The Ocean Network Express-operated ONE Apus is getting ready to depart Japan after operations to discharge collapsed and damaged containers after its record-setting cargo loss in the Pacific Ocean last year.

A Customer Advisory dated March 10 said the ship is tentatively schedule to depart Kobe on or around March 15. If so, the vessel will have an arrival date in Long Beach of around March 30, however, ONE warns that the schedule is subject to change and is without guarantee.

ONE said the general plan is to back-load as many original sound and trans-loaded containers on ONE APUS as reasonably possible. “It is likely that some containers originally carried on ONE APUS may need to be carried on different vessels due to safety and/or operational constraints. Some containers may also be carried on different vessels if required documentation can’t be completed before given cutoff time,” the company said in its latest Customer Advisory on the situation.

The ONE Apus was underway from China to Long Beach, California when it lost an estimated 1,816 containers overboard in heavy weather approximately 1,600 nautical miles northwest of Hawaii on November 30. Hundreds of more were collapsed on deck.

The ship arrived at Kobe, Japan on December 8, where cargo operations and any repairs took place. An update from ONE on February 26 said a total of 940 boxes had been discharged to date.

The incident was the worst in a serious of weather-related cargo losses on the trans-Pacific this season as ships loaded to the brim with cargo pour into the United States from China.

According to a World Shipping Council report in November, an average of just 1,382 containers are lost at sea each year from around 5,000 container vessels in operation, however the number can vary greatly when taking into account catastrophic events like the ONE Apus cargo loss.

The Japanese-registered ONE Apus is operated on Ocean Network Express’s Far East Pacific 2 (FP2) Service and has capacity of 14,000 twenty-foot equivalent boxes, or TEU. General Average was never declared in the accident.

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