Data accuracy report
Most container-prefix directories publish a static table and never revisit it. Blue Water Facts runs an automated monthly spot-check of our owner-prefix registry against the Bureau International des Containers (BIC) — the body that actually issues ISO 6346 owner codes — and we publish the raw result of every run below, including anything that didn't match.
Why this exists
In July 2026 an internal review found 57 prefixes in our registry claimed by two or more carrier profiles at once (equipment does get reassigned or leased between operators, but some of those were plain authoring errors). We corrected the registry against BIC records and, rather than let it drift again, wired up a recurring job that keeps checking it. BIC does not publish a bulk or keyless export, so the job cannot re-verify all ~728 codes in one pass — it checks every code still flagged as multi-claimed (the highest-risk set) plus a rotating slice of single-claim codes each month, so full coverage accumulates over time without hammering their lookup pages.
What we found and changed in July 2026
Beyond the 57-duplicate issue described above, a follow-up review of every carrier, route, alliance and format page (330 pages total) found the per-carrier prefix registry -- our core claimed asset -- was unreliable at a scale we could not responsibly keep publishing as fact:
- 72 of 265 carrier pages carried stale meta/OG-tag prefix claims left over from before the registry correction, contradicting the corrected data underneath.
- 73 of 265 carrier pages recited a templated "N registered ISO 6346 owner prefixes" sentence that did not match the number of codes actually rendered on the same page (most commonly claiming 3 regardless of the real count).
- 37 carrier profiles for companies disclosed as operating 0 vessels (NVOCCs and forwarders) had their SCAC code duplicated into the ISO-prefix list; the large majority of those codes end in a letter that is not a valid ISO 6346 category identifier (U, J or Z), meaning they cannot be genuine ISO 6346 codes.
- Our own spot-check log below (40 codes checked to date) found only 2 confirmed matches against BIC's live registry: 20 returned HTTP 404, 12 have no BIC listing, and 6 resolve to a real but different company than the one we attributed the code to.
- An independent fresh sample of 10 additional long-tail codes, checked directly against bic-code.org outside this automated job, found 0 confirmed matches, 4 resolving to a different real company, 2 HTTP 404s and 4 with no BIC listing. Top-tier carrier codes (Maersk, MSC, Hapag-Lloyd) did independently verify.
Given that failure rate, we removed the per-carrier owner-prefix list feature sitewide in July 2026 rather than continue publishing a registry we could not stand behind -- carrier profiles now cover fleet size, headquarters, alliance membership and trade lanes only. The raw self-audit log is still published below and in /assets/prefixes.json so anyone can check our work.
This run's results
Loading the latest audit data…
What "flagged for review" means
A code is flagged, not silently corrected, whenever the BIC-registered company name for that code doesn't line up with the carrier we currently attribute it to. We do not auto-rewrite carrier attributions from this job — a human reviewer checks the flag against the primary source (BIC's own per-code page, plus the carrier's own equipment disclosures where available) before any copy changes. That keeps a bad automated match from silently overwriting a correct one.
If you spot a prefix that looks wrong before we do, tell us at editor@bluewaterfacts.com with the code and a source, and we'll check it against BIC directly.