ONE Apus Sets Sail from Japan Months After Cargo Loss

The MV ONE Apus departed Kobe, Japan on Tuesday after a major operation to remove hundreds of damaged and dislodged containers on deck following last year’s cargo loss.

In a customer advisory, the ship’s operator Ocean Network Express said the vessel left Kobe today at 1300 hrs and she is estimated to arrive in Long Beach, California, on or around March 30. Because of congestion at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, ONE Apus may not berth until April 7, however these dates are subject to change.

While the general plan was to back-loud as many of the original sound contains as possible, ONE said that some containers originally carried on ONE Apus may need to be carried on different vessels.

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 more were collapsed on deck.

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

The incident was the worst in a series 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.