Environmentalists in France are to sue the Danish shipping company Maersk after it lost over 500 shipping containers at sea, and failed to tell officials. The containers were lost during Storm Ulla which hit western France in February, but it took Maersk several weeks to own up to losing 517 containers from one of its ships due to the storm.
Maersk has initially said that it had lost just 70 containers off the coast of Brittany when there were giant waves offshore. But on the admission that the number was actually more than seven times that amount, the environmental campaigners Robin des Bois announced that it was making a legal complaint against the company in the Brittany port of Brest, accusing it of “endangering lives” and pollution and “abandoning waste”.