Experts warn importers to prepare for maritime shipping industry volatility in 2025

“With the insured, we tell them, ‘You have to act as a prudent uninsured. Act as if you don’t have insurance.'"
Shipping containers at the Port of Los Angeles
Shipping experts are cautioning maritime importers to prepare for volatility in 2025 | Photo courtesy of Robert V Schwemmer/Shutterstock
8 Min

East and Gulf coast ports in the U.S. narrowly avoided a strike recently when the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) came to a tentative contract agreement. 

The threatened strike, however, was only the most recent issue in a series of upheavals for shippers in 2024, which saw multiple crises impact shipping routes – including missle attacks in the Red Sea and droughts impacting the Panama Canal’s ability to host large ships.

Many experts are predicting widespread disruptions will continue in 2025.

Steve Raptis, an insurance lawyer at law firm Reed Smith, told SeafoodSource that though importers are likely feeling relieved about the averted strike, this is the time for them to plan for the next upheaval. 

"Insurance policies are awful to read ... but [shippers] really need to look at their insurance policies and figure out what they're covered for and what they're not because there are so many misconceptions," he said. “Lots of people buy property policies, and they see that it has business interruption coverage. They mistakenly assume that an event like a strike, which interrupts their business, will be covered. The cause of the interruption has to be physical loss or damage, which is what the policy itself covers. So, unless the [striking] port workers set everything on fire or torpedo the ships, there’s not physical loss or damage to cover.” 

Darin Miller, the national marine manager at insurance claims adjuster Sedgwick agreed, saying that he has seen many denied claims over cargo delays because most are not caused by the shipper involved but, rather, by outside forces like the strike activity, terrorism, and weather events that caused delays last year. 

“Most of the time delays are denied coverage; they’re not a coverable loss,” Miller said. 

Raptis said this requires shipping firms to put in a bit more legwork.

"The good news is that there is coverage out there that will cover strikes, but you have to go out specifically and buy it," he said. "It’s a specialized product that’s called a few different things, and it goes by different names because it’s marketed by different insurers. At the end of the day, what it really is is supply chain insurance. That’s what you buy when you want to get coverage for your loss of net profits because a strike means that you can’t load and unload your ships.” 

Miller advocates for this kind of creative risk management as well, further suggesting ...


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