How Many Shipping Containers Are Lost at Sea? 1,478 in 2025

About 1,478 containers were lost at sea worldwide in 2025

The 2026 report of the World Shipping Council (WSC) puts losses at 1,478 containers in 2025, out of about 280 million transported worldwide, or 0.0005% of the year’s container movements. The total rose from 576 in 2024 and sits far above the 486 a year averaged from 2022 to 2024.

One incident drove most of the jump. WSC records a single vessel loss of 640 containers, about 43% of the year, without naming the ship. The other 838 boxes went overboard in a handful of weather, stack collapse, cargo shift and fire incidents, which on its own is more than any of the 3 years before.

How the World Shipping Council counts lost containers

Almost every global count of lost containers comes from 1 survey. WSC asks its member carriers, which run about 90% of global container ship capacity, how many boxes they lost, then scales the answer up on the assumption that carriers running the other 10% lose containers at the same rate. From 2011 to 2020 it surveyed every 3 years and published 3-year averages; after a run of large losses in the winter of 2020 to 2021 it switched to a count for every year.

The base matters as much as the count. The 250 million WSC used for 2022 covers packed and empty containers shipped in a year, so its loss rate is per container trip, not per box in existence. WSC put the 2025 base at about 280 million.

Each average describes its own window of years:

Figure	Years covered	Containers per year	Published by
Annual count	2025	1,478	WSC, June 2026
3-year average	2020 to 2022	2,301	WSC, May 2023
2-year average	2020 and 2021	3,113	WSC, May 2023
10-year average	10 years to 2024	1,274	WSC, June 2025
15-year average	2008 to 2022	1,566	WSC, May 2023
18-year average	2008 to 2025	about 1,430	Our arithmetic on WSC’s figures

A second count starts with 2026 data. At its 108th session in May 2024, the IMO’s Maritime Safety Committee adopted SOLAS amendments that include reporting the loss of containers, in force from January 1, 2026. Under the revised chapter V regulations 31 and 32, ships report every container lost or seen drifting, and flag states report the number lost to the IMO. Until then, international rules required a report only for containers declared to carry dangerous goods or marine pollutants. WSC says it will keep running its own survey next to the IMO figures so the series stays comparable.

Container losses by year, 2008 to 2025

WSC’s series runs in 3-year blocks to 2019, a 2-year block for 2020 and 2021, then single years. Period totals below are the average multiplied by the years in the block.

Period	Average lost per year	Period total	Incidents WSC names
2008 to 2010	675	about 2,030	None
2011 to 2013	2,683	about 8,050	Rena grounding, 2011 (about 900); MOL Comfort sinking, 2013 (4,293)
2014 to 2016	1,390	about 4,170	El Faro sinking, 2015
2017 to 2019	779	about 2,340	No loss as large as earlier periods
2020 to 2021	3,113	about 6,230	ONE Apus, 2020 (1,800+); a second ship in severe weather, 2021 (about 750)
2022	661	661	Only 2 carriers lost more than 100 boxes
2023	221	221	About 33% recovered
2024	576	576	About 200 in Cape of Good Hope waters
2025	1,478	1,478	1 vessel loss of 640

Average containers lost per year, by WSC survey period

• 2008-2010675
• 2011-20132,683
• 2014-20161,390
• 2017-2019779
• 2020-20213,113
• 2022661
• 2023221
• 2024576
• 20251,478

Source: World Shipping Council, Containers Lost at Sea 2023 Update (periods to 2022) and 2024 to 2026 updates

The single-year extremes are 5,578 boxes in 2013 and 221 in 2023. Without the MOL Comfort, 2013 would have come in at 1,285, below the 2025 count. The calmest stretch before 2022 was 2017 to 2019, at 779 a year with no loss on the scale of the earlier periods; the next 2 years averaged 4 times that.

The 3 years from 2022 to 2024 were the lowest run WSC has recorded, at 1,458 boxes combined, fewer than went overboard in 2025 alone. WSC’s 2026 report reads 2025 as a reversal of that decline that still falls inside the range major incidents have produced before.

Loss rate: containers lost per million shipped

Year	Containers lost	Containers transported	Share lost	Lost per million	1 lost for every
2022	661	250 million	0.00048%	2.6	378,000
2023	221	250 million	0.00009% (our arithmetic)	0.9	1.13 million
2024	576	about 250 million	0.0002%	2.3	434,000
2025	1,478	about 280 million	0.0005%	5.3	189,000

WSC publishes the share for 2022, 2024 and 2025; the per-million and 1-in figures are our division of its counts by its bases. Even the worst recent year works out to about 5 boxes in every million moved.

Containers lost per million transported

• 20222.6
• 20230.9
• 20242.3
• 20255.3

Source: World Shipping Council 2023 to 2026 updates; rate is our arithmetic (containers lost divided by containers transported)

Those boxes ride on more than 7,000 container ships that WSC describes as continuously operating, carrying cargo it valued at more than $7 trillion a year in its 2023 report. Losses in the hundreds or low thousands against a base of 250 million to 280 million are why WSC calls container loss a very small fraction of global movements, even in 2025.

The largest single container losses on record

WSC’s reports name only a few ships. The 5 incidents below add up to about 8,380 containers, roughly a third of the 25,800 or so lost from 2008 to 2025 by our arithmetic.

Ship	Year of loss	Containers	Event
MOL Comfort	2013	4,293	Sank; 77% of the year’s 5,578 (our arithmetic)
ONE Apus	2020	More than 1,800	Severe weather
Rena	2011	About 900	Grounded and lost
A second container ship	2021	About 750	Severe weather
A vessel WSC does not name	2025	640	Vessel loss, 43% of the year

India’s records of the MSC Elsa 3 show what a total loss looks like from the shore. The Liberian-flagged container ship developed a severe starboard list on May 24, 2025, about 30 nautical miles southwest of Kochi, and sank 13 nautical miles off the Kerala coast at 7:50 the next morning, according to the Kerala State Disaster Management Authority. Every container on deck went adrift, among them 13 holding calcium carbide, a dangerous good that gives off flammable gas when it meets water.

A month on, the cleanup was still running. India’s Directorate General of Shipping reported on June 26 that 105 intact bags of plastic pellets had been picked up near Alappuzha, 45.567 tonnes of cleaned pellets had been trucked to Kollam Port, and a container was floating near Alappuzha. Oil extraction and wreck removal waited on a diving support vessel due around August 1.

What causes containers to fall off ships

WSC’s 2026 report says losses usually come from several factors at once, with bad weather most often the trigger.

Cause	How it puts containers in the water	Where WSC points to it
Heavy weather and stack collapse	Rolling and wave loads overstress lashings and deck stacks fall	North Pacific and North Atlantic in 2025; the winter of 2020 to 2021
Parametric rolling	Roll angles build suddenly in following seas	Early TopTier research results, 2023
Fire	Fire damages stacks and can sink the ship; misdeclared or undeclared dangerous goods are a leading cause	Fire-related incidents in 2025; ship fires at their highest in over a decade
Grounding or sinking	The ship goes down with every box on board	MOL Comfort 2013, Rena 2011, the 640-container loss of 2025
Wrong weights and poor packing	Misdeclared weights distort stowage and lashing plans; cargo shifts inside the box	Verified gross mass rule in force since July 1, 2016

The weather finding for 2025 is specific. WSC says the total number of storms was not much above average, but warmer than normal ocean temperatures and more severe, less predictable conditions in the North Pacific and North Atlantic raised the odds of an incident whenever a ship met heavy weather.

Weight drives the stowage plan. Terminals and ship planners stack boxes by declared gross mass, content and destination, with the heaviest at the bottom and the lightest on top, so a container declared light but packed heavy ends up high in a stack it can overload. The TopTier project, launched in July 2021 and led by the Maritime Research Institute Netherlands with more than 40 partners, filed its final recommendations on these causes with the IMO in September 2025.

Where containers are lost: Cape of Good Hope, North Pacific, North Atlantic

Route changes move the losses. When disruption in the Red Sea pushed ships off the Suez Canal route and around Africa, the number of ships rounding the Cape of Good Hope was 191% higher in 2024 than in 2023, according to WSC’s 2025 update. The South African Maritime Safety Authority put the containers lost in those waters at about 200, roughly 35% of the year’s global total. Joe Kramek, WSC’s president and CEO, said the rerouting had carriers sailing one of the world’s most challenging routes.

Area	Year	What WSC or the authorities report
Cape of Good Hope	2024	About 200 containers lost as Red Sea diversions raised transits 191%
North Pacific	2025	More severe and less predictable weather cited as a key contributor
North Atlantic	2025	The same weather finding
Off Kerala, India	2025	MSC Elsa 3 sank 13 nautical miles offshore with its deck containers adrift

How many lost containers are recovered

WSC began collecting recovery data with 2023. That year about 33% of the 221 lost containers were recovered, roughly 73 boxes. In 2025, 128 were recovered, the highest count so far, yet still 8.7% of the year’s losses. WSC credits better tracking and closer work between carriers and coastal authorities. Since January 2026 a container seen drifting also has to be reported, not only one a ship knows it lost.

Recovery also happens on the beach. In the MSC Elsa 3 case, Indian agencies sent sea and shore teams after a floating container near Alappuzha and were still collecting pellet bags and debris from the coast weeks after the sinking.

What container losses mean for a brand shipping product by sea

The odds for any one box are tiny. At 2025’s rate of 1 in about 189,000, a brand importing 200 containers a year would expect to lose 1 roughly every 950 years. Overboard loss on its own should not set your inventory plan.

The risk that does matter arrives as a whole ship. When a vessel sinks, every box on it goes: 4,293 on the MOL Comfort, 640 in the 2025 incident. A brand that puts a launch or a full season of stock on 1 sailing carries that exposure in 1 shipment. Splitting a large purchase order across 2 vessels a week apart caps the loss at half the order and spreads the receiving work at the warehouse.

Part of the risk is in the shipper’s hands. WSC’s 2026 report puts packing, securing and declaring cargo correctly on shippers, packers and freight forwarders, and verified gross mass has been a legal condition of loading under SOLAS since July 1, 2016. Misdeclared dangerous goods are a leading cause of ship fires, so carriers in WSC’s Cargo Safety Program screen bookings and can order a physical inspection when one is flagged. Charcoal has had to be declared as a dangerous good under the IMDG Code since the start of 2026.

Route choices change lead times as well as exposure. Ships that swing south past the Cape instead of using Suez sail a longer and rougher route, so stock bought for a fixed selling window needs more buffer at the receiving warehouse. Most freight from Asia to the US West Coast crosses the North Pacific, one of the 2 oceans WSC tied to 2025’s weather losses, and a brand landing goods through San Pedro Bay that is comparing 3PLs in Los Angeles can ask each one how fast it receives and ships a replacement batch flown in after a lost sailing.