(Reuters) – Norwegian car shipping firm Wallenius Wilhelmsen estimates last week’s Baltimore bridge collapse will hurt core earnings by $5 million to $10 million and expects the major ship channel to remain closed for weeks, it said on Wednesday. Went.
The company said its ship Carmen, one of the largest car carriers in its fleet according to shipping data, is stuck in the port of Baltimore, with the ship and its crew ready to depart as soon as the channel reopens .
Recovery teams opened a second channel Tuesday enabling smaller ships to navigate the Port of Baltimore, but most commercial shipping remains blocked because of the collapsed bridge and stranded container ship Dali, which toppled the structure a week ago.
“We have estimated the provisional total financial impact on EBITDA of the situation to be in the range of $5-10 million, assuming the disruption lasts for a month,” said Wallenius Wilhelmsen, one of the world’s leading auto carriers. A statement on Wednesday.
“We currently expect the closure to last several weeks and have based our impact projections on that assumption,” it said.
“Once opened, we expect the terminal to immediately resume normal cargo operations as ships begin calling the port as previously scheduled.”
“There is certainly a risk of delays in anticipated reopening, or unexpected challenges in rescue operations.”
According to the State of Maryland, the Port of Baltimore ranks first in the US for the volume of autos and light trucks, agricultural and construction machinery, imported sugar and imported gypsum handled.
Some terminal operations outside the affected area have resumed.
“Water cargo headed to Baltimore is currently being rerouted to other US ports such as Newport News, Newark and Savannah,” Wallenius Wilhelmsen said in the statement.
Insurers and reinsurers could face billions of dollars in claims, with one costing more than $4 billion, analysts said. This would make this tragedy a record shipping insurance loss.
In a petition filed in Maryland District Court on April 1, Dali’s owner Grace Ocean Pte. Ltd. and its manager Synergy Marine Pte. filed to limit their liability to a maximum of $43.6 million.
“The injuries were not caused by any fault, negligence or lack of care on the part of the petitioners,” the filing said.
Insurance industry sources said this was an initial attempt to limit the risk.
According to Loretta Worters, spokeswoman for the Insurance Information Institute, a US industry body, the move to limit liability is similar to the strategy employed by the Titanic’s owner to limit compensation after the Titanic sank in 1912.
An 1851 US federal law limits shipowners’ liability to the current value of the ship.
In the Titanic’s case, the owner sought to limit liability to the value of the lifeboats, said Kevin Kearney, senior vice president of insurance broker Hugh Wood.
“They were only responsible for the value of the lifeboats, and that was because the Titanic itself was lost.”
