Reefer ships transport the bananas in supermarkets, the salmon in restaurants, and the vaccines in hospitals. These refrigerated cargo vessels move over 100 million tonnes of temperature-sensitive goods across the world's oceans each year. For prospective MAT holders evaluating vessel assets on the Shipfinex platform, reefer ships occupy a distinct segment with its own compliance standards, seasonal demand cycles, and technical specifications that directly affect charter earnings. Quick...

International shipping moves more than 80% of global trade by volume. Before MARPOL, it was entirely legal to pump oily bilge water directly into the sea, dump raw garbage over the rail, and release untreated sewage wherever a vessel happened to be sailing. The 1967 Torrey Canyon disaster (which released 119,000 tonnes of crude oil off the Cornish coast, killing an estimated 15,000 seabirds) exposed how completely unregulated maritime pollution was. MARPOL, adopted in 1973 and strengthened by...

On the night of 14 April 1912, more than 1,517 people died when RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic. Within two years, the world's maritime nations had signed the first International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea. That convention, now in its 1974 form, governs every commercial ship on every ocean today, covering the structural safety of vessels carrying billions of tonnes of cargo and millions of passengers annually. As of 2026, 167 contracting states representing approximately...