RightShip's age threshold drops to 11 years — and its own PSC data explains why

RightShip is phasing down the age at which it expects to see a valid inspection. From 1 April 2026 the requirement applied to vessels 12 years and older, and from 1 July 2026 it extends to 11 years and older. The company has also said the vetting criteria and the Safety Score align to a single implementation date at each stage of the rollout, rather than moving separately.

The final step is stated two ways

Here the paper trail stops agreeing with itself, and owners planning against it should know before they budget.

RightShip’s consolidated timeline — the most recent of the three publications, and the one that describes itself as simplifying the rollout — puts the last step at 10 years and older from 1 January 2027. Its guidance page written for owners, managers and charterers gives 10.5 years, from 20 January 2027. The earlier phases line up across both documents. Only the final one diverges, and it diverges on both the age and the date.

We have not found a RightShip statement reconciling the two, and we are not choosing between them here. The gap matters in a specific way: a ship delivered in mid-2016 is either inside the regime on 1 January 2027 or outside it until later in the year, depending on which figure applies. That is the difference between an inspection booked and an inspection missed, and the Safety Score consequence falls on the ship either way. Confirm the current position with RightShip before committing an inspection budget or a fixture to either number.

A reader who wants to see how the phases land on a particular ship can enter a delivery date in our age trigger checker, which shows both readings side by side rather than picking one. Where the date lands inside the regime, the next two questions are how ready the ship is today and what fits before the inspection window — our RightShip readiness check covers the first, and the 90-day preparation plan sequences the second.

The questionnaire behind those inspections has moved too. RISQ 3.2 carries roughly 150 adjustments, which RightShip describes as clearer definitions, refined guidance and more practical expectations across training, navigation, ISM processes, machinery space operations, pollution prevention, cargo management and mooring practices. Our RISQ preparation checklist walks the vessel by operational area rather than by question number — deliberately, since the question set itself is RightShip’s and not ours to reproduce. The company reports close to 5,000 inspections in 2025, and says hybrid inspections averaged 11.5 hours onboard against 14.1 hours for standard inspections.

Why push the threshold down? A separate analysis RightShip published in July 2026 sets out the pattern it is working from. It reports more than 77,400 PSC inspections globally in 2025 across over 32,470 ships, producing 184,738 deficiencies — an average of 2.4 per inspection. More than one in two inspections found at least one deficiency, 3.6% ended in detention, and detained vessels lost an average of 5.6 days.

Two findings in that analysis bear directly on the age policy. Vessels aged 14 to 24 years account for the largest share of inspections globally and across the major MoUs. And bulk carriers and general cargo ships together account for nearly 60% of all PSC inspections, with bulk carriers alone at roughly 38% — precisely the segment the age trigger covers.

The severity curve is steeper than the averages suggest. RightShip reports that a vessel carrying a single high-risk deficiency faces a 4.1% detention rate against the fleet-wide 3.6%, while a vessel with 11 or more deficiencies faces a 61% probability of detention. Deficiencies do not accumulate in a straight line toward risk; past a point they compound.

RightShip also publishes a comparison of ships holding a valid inspection of its own against the wider fleet — 2.0 deficiencies on average versus 2.4, and a 2.4% detention ratio versus 3.6%. Those are the company’s own figures for its own programme, and are best read as such.

Apeks view — An age trigger is a proxy, and the data here shows the proxy running slightly ahead of the risk: inspections concentrate in the 14-to-24 band while the threshold moves toward 10. For owners of dry bulk and general cargo tonnage the practical consequence is that a ship enters the regime years before its condition would ordinarily warrant attention, which makes continuity of evidence between inspections the thing worth organising.