A single mislabelled container can look like a minor paperwork error, right up until it explodes at berth or at sea. This insight examines the financial and legal exposure a dangerous goods failure creates for carriers, and why compliance alone is no longer enough to guard against it.
This insight is drawn from Thetius and Tigris Systems report, Before the Fire: Dangerous Goods Safety and the Visibility Gap. It looks at the financial and legal exposure a single dangerous goods failure can create for carriers, from restow costs to insurance recourse.
Based on an estimate that between 5% and 10% of cargo may be hazardous, a vessel the size of the 23,992-TEU Ever Ace could carry between 1,200 and 2,400 TEU of hazardous cargo. If each required a single 15-page SDS, this could amount to as many as 36,000 pages of information for one voyage.
The carrier still needs to identify the few details that could affect acceptance, stowage or emergency response, even though it did not pack the container.
Dangerous-goods failures are also becoming a more direct insurance risk for carriers. From 20 February 2026, International Group P&I Clubs require members to preserve rights of recourse in contracts for the carriage of dangerous goods. If those rights are waived or limited, the Club may only cover the liabilities at its discretion.
The container ship YM Mobility was carrying 4,113 TEU when a dangerous-goods container caught fire and exploded at Ningbo’s Beilun Second Container Terminal in August 2024, including 16 tonnes of tert-butyl peroxybenzoate (TBPB), a Class 5.2 organic peroxide. The cargo had been booked into an unplugged refrigerated container instead of a powered one. China’s Maritime Safety Administration found that neither the shipper nor the carrier had properly assessed the risk of shipping the heat-sensitive peroxide unventilated during a summer heatwave, when yard temperatures reached around 40°C. The trapped heat drove the cargo into thermal runaway, and the container exploded at berth.
The consequences extended beyond the vessel itself. The blast destroyed three adjacent containers, threw two onto the dock and shoreline, and knocked four into the sea, causing an estimated CNY 90 million (around US$13 million) in direct losses.
Allianz’s 2025 Safety and Shipping Review found that container ship fires now occur roughly every 17 days worldwide, with misdeclared cargo linked to around a quarter of them.
The wider financial impact of fires can be much greater when damaged cargo, disrupted operations, supply chain delays, and reputational damage are factored in. TT Club estimates that cargo incidents linked to poor packing and misdeclared goods result in economic losses of more than US$6 billion each year, affecting manufacturers, shippers and other businesses across the supply chain.
“Most container ships are 100% compliant in terms of firefighting capability and crew training. I have no doubt about that. However, recent container fire cases suggest that compliance alone is simply not enough, especially for battery fires.”
— A senior maritime executive and former master mariner
Download ‘Before the Fire’ to read more about the financial and legal exposure dangerous goods failures create for carriers.
