Hapag-Lloyd has had to evacuate crew from the Yantian Express following an uncontrolled fire on the vessel. The fire follows a series of operational challenges faced by Mitsui OSK, MSC and Maersk at the start of 2019, underscoring the vulnerability of global supply chains to vessel disruptions. The vessel operated on Hapag-Lloyd’s EC5 service between Sri Lanka and North America. In 2018 shipments on the service were dominated by apparel at 56.6% of all volumes with leading freight forwarders utilizing it being Expeditors International and Kintetsu Group.