Mystery Ship Issue Uncovered But Delays Mounting

The mystery issue, which led to an Asia/Europe ship idling in the Red Sea for days, has now been uncovered.

The reason the APL Vanda’s journey stalled is because it had been caught in a storm and lost 55 containers overboard, with a further 36 damaged. Carriers were unaware exactly how many containers had been lost until the vessel made an unscheduled stop at the Port of Djibouti, which perhaps partially explains why they remained tight lipped initially.

The vessel headed to the East African port slowly to ensure that no further containers were lost and the damaged containers are being removed. Once this has been done, and the vessel is safe to travel, it will continue its journey, but not to the UK as we understand, since the port of Southampton has now been omitted from its schedule.

Instead, the container ship is due to sail to the Moroccan port of Tangier, where UK bound cargo will be removed and then loaded on to another ship for transhipment to the UK. Delays are mounting as the original eta in Southampton was four days ago, 17th July, and it still hasn’t passed through Suez.

It seems likely that UK cargo will arrive 2/3 weeks behind the originally scheduled date, disrupting the supply chains of hundreds of customers.

One mystery solved but still no clarity on arrival times.