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full screen The Swedish Transport Agency sees a worrying development with unseaworthy ships. The vessel in the archive image has no connection to the inspections. Photo: Johan Nilsson/TT
Last year, 23 foreign ships were banned from leaving Swedish ports because they were deemed unseaworthy. Worrying, according to the Swedish Transport Agency.
A ban on use means that the ship is stopped until the deficiencies are remedied.
The use bans last year were more than twice as many as the years before: twelve bans in 2023 and ten bans in 2022.
“Despite doing fewer inspections, we find more ships with serious deficiencies. We have not seen this type of vessel in our Swedish waters before, it is clearly worrying,” says the authority’s director general Jonas Bjelfvenstam in a press release.
The number of deficiencies on board has also increased sharply, and was 1,576 last year. It may be about poor fire protection or deficiencies in the working environment for the crew.
The Swedish Transport Agency assesses that the ships’ deteriorating condition is due to rising freight prices, which influences the shipping companies to choose less serious flag states. The authority sees no connection between the increase in the number of use bans and the so-called Russian shadow fleet.