Maritime Briefing of 15 September 2026

as a precautionary measure after an attack on the line, removing for now the route the kingdom had been using to reach the Red Sea while the Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted. Houthi forces have taken the island of Mayun, also known as Perim, inside the Bab el-Mandeb, and struck coastal positions near Mokha; the Houthi armed forces declared that navigation is safe for all companies except Saudi vessels. Saudi crude is now being pushed north out of the Red Sea towards the Mediterranean, by the Suez Canal or by pipeline through Egypt, a far longer haul for Asian buyers.

by Russian drones. Ukraine's Ministry of Recovery, Infrastructure and Transport said the vessel was marked in accordance with international maritime conventions and that the evidence would be forwarded to the IMO. No injuries were reported aboard.

after the roughly 15-metre passenger vessel Matui sank on 11 September between Espiritu Santo and Ambae in Vanuatu, with 13 of the 52 on board rescued. MRCC Noumea took over coordination only on the evening of 12 September, after the vessel had been out of contact for more than 34 hours; debris and lifejackets were found on the eastern coast of Espiritu Santo, and targeted searching was suspended on 13 September.

while the vessel was off the French coast. The ship has since berthed at Vlissingen, where the Dutch Safety Board has opened an investigation.

, about 25,000 TEU above the previous peak in May. Volumes for the first seven months reached 115.8m TEU, 5.1% up on the same period of 2025, with sub-Saharan African imports up 14% and European imports up 6.1%. North American imports from the Far East reached 2.23m TEU in July, and spot rates from the Far East to the US East Coast have risen a further 25% since early July, leaving them 14% below their pandemic peak.

, down 3.3% over the week and its lowest since 3 September. Capesize earnings fell $380 to $51,636 a day and panamax earnings $22 to $21,662, while the supramax index gained 2.6% on the week.

worth INR 1,800 crore to develop, own and run the international ship repair facility at Kochi, which opened in 2024 under sole Cochin Shipyard ownership. The yard recovered its initial investment through the transaction and keeps half the business; the facility handles merchant and naval vessels of up to 130 metres.

, built with the Snow & Co shipyard, with the first four committed for delivery before the end of 2027. Each will carry more than 4,000 horsepower of electric powertrain backed by a 6MWh battery buffer, and the project is funded privately.

for a reported EUR 110m to a Swiss company said to operate around 100 ships. Ordered for Star Clippers as the Flying Clipper and never delivered, the 8,770gt ship has spent most of the past five years laid up in Croatia. The yard is now pursuing a resumption of work on the expedition ship Janssonius, which stands at about 70% complete.

Special Provision 188 of the IMDG Code exempts smaller cells from certain requirements, with no limit on how many exempt batteries may be consolidated in one container: a box of around 4,200 laptops can hold roughly 416kWh, the equivalent of three or four electric vehicles, with no dangerous goods documentation and no placarding. Joe Kramek, president and chief executive of the council, said the exemption "was intended to simplify the transport of individual devices with small batteries, not to make entire container loads invisible." The council and five governments have put a paper proposing a container-level threshold to the IMO Sub-Committee on Carriage of Cargoes and Containers, meeting in London from 14 to 18 September.

, with its Energy Efficiency Operational Indicator falling from 17.80 in 2023 to 14.40 in 2025. The third-generation 32,000 dwt Super B-Class ships introduced in 2024 recorded the best figures in the fleet at 4.27 in 2024 and 4.99 in 2025. The multipurpose heavy-lift operator, which runs 28 vessels, also reported no environmental incidents between 2023 and 2025.

, worth more than GBP 7m, covering the East Anglia TWO and East Anglia THREE wind farms for ScottishPower Renewables. VOS Traveller will work out of Lowestoft on continuous standby.