Analysis of 2020 inspection results

Arrivals

AMSA conducted PSC inspections in 46 ports across Australia. As shown in the table below, arrivals were not distributed evenly across the 70 ports visited by foreign ships in 2020, with 42 per cent of all arrivals occurring at the top five ports.

Ship arrivals in Australian ports for 2020

Port Hedland remained the busiest port for foreign-flagged ship arrivals, predominantly for the export of iron ore. In Newcastle and Gladstone, the majority of arrivals were also for the dry bulk export market, mainly coal. In Brisbane and Melbourne, the majority of arrivals were engaged in the container trade.

Port Hedland remained the busiest port for foreign-flagged ship arrivals, predominantly for the export of iron ore. In Newcastle and Gladstone, the majority of arrivals were also for the dry bulk export market, mainly coal. In Brisbane and Melbourne, the majority of arrivals were engaged in the container trade.

2020 Port arrivals by ship type

Table 2—Ship arrivals by ship type in 2020 compared to 2019

Inspections by ship type

In 2020, AMSA Inspectors carried out 3021 initial PSC inspections and 1501 PSC follow up inspections. AMSA Inspectors are now able to conduct remote follow up inspections in accordance with Tokyo Memorandum of Understanding guidelines, 35 of the follow up inspections in 2020 were conducted remotely.

PSC inspections by ship type

Table 3—Total ships inspected by ship type

Inspection by location

Of the 46 ports where inspections were conducted, the top five ports accounted for 51% per cent of the 3021 initial PSC inspections undertaken as shown in Table 4.

Table 4—PSC inspections 2020 top 15 locations

As in previous years, in 2020 the greatest numbers of PSC initial inspections were undertaken in Western Australia followed by Queensland then New South Wales. Inspections by state are shown in Table 5 and Figure 2.

Table 5—PSC inspections in 2020 by state/territory

PSC inspections in 2020 by state/territory

Inspections by flag State

In 2020, Panama remained the flag State with the largest number of ships inspected by AMSA, with 703 Panamanian ships (23 per cent of the total) being subject to an initial PSC inspection.

The top five flag States remains unchanged since 2015 and inspections of ships from Panama, Liberia, Marshall Islands, Hong Kong China and Singapore accounted for 70 per cent of all PSC inspections in 2020. The top 12 flags, as listed in Table 6, accounted for 2684 inspections, or 89 per cent of all inspections.

A five-year breakdown of the number of ships inspected by flag State is provided in Table 7. The table does not show any significant change in the proportional inspection rates by flag States over the last five years.

Table 6—PSC inspections by top 12 flag States in 2020

Note: figures in bold are not in the top 12 in those years.

Table 7—Total ships inspected by flag State

The list below represents inspections by flag State where 25 or more ships have been subjected to inspection during 2020. Flag States that have less than 25 inspections in a year are not considered to be statistically significant in this context.

Distribution of PSC inspections by flag State