Analysis of 2021 inspection results

Arrivals

AMSA conducted PSC inspections at 53 out of the 74 ports visited by foreign ships across Australia in 2021. As shown in the table below, arrivals were not distributed evenly across the ports visited, with 42 per cent of all arrivals occurring at the top five ports.

Ship arrivals in Australian ports for 2021

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

Figure 1 – 2021 Port arrivals by ship type

Table 2 – Ship arrivals by ship type in 2021 compared to 2020

Inspections by ship type

In 2021, AMSA inspectors carried out 2,820 initial PSC inspections and 1,455 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 2021 were conducted remotely.

PSC inspections by ship type

Table 3 – Total ships inspected by ship type

Table 3 shows the number of inspections by ship type from 2017 to 2021.

Inspection by location

Of the 53 ports where inspections were conducted, the top five ports accounted for 43.6% per cent of the 2,820 initial PSC inspections undertaken as shown in Table 4.

Table 4 – PSC inspections 2021 top 15 locations 

As in previous years, in 2021 the greatest numbers of PSC initial inspections were undertaken in Western Australia, followed by Queensland and New South Wales. Inspections by state are shown in Table 5.

Table 5 – PSC inspections in 2021 by state/territory

Figure 2 – PSC inspections in 2021 by state/territory

Inspections by flag State

In 2021, Panama remained the flag State with the largest number of ships inspected by AMSA, with 624 Panamanian ships (22 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 72 per cent of all PSC inspections in 2021. The top 12 flags, as listed in Table 6, accounted for 2,505 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 2021

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

Table 7 – Total ships inspected by flag State

Figure 3 represents inspections by flag State where 25 or more ships have been subjected to inspection during 2021. Flag States that have less than 25 inspections in a year are not considered to be statistically significant in this context.

Figure 3 – Distribution of PSC inspections by flag State