<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">Embraport, one of Brazil’s newest container terminals in the Port of Santos, is looking to bring in a new partner to spread the risk of running the operation against a background of falling box volumes in Brazil, sharp falls in profitable imports, and overcapacity at Santos.
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Embraport, one of Brazil’s newest container terminals in the Port of Santos, is looking to bring in a new partner to spread the risk of running the operation against a background of falling box volumes in Brazil, sharp falls in profitable imports, and overcapacity at Santos.

<div>Embraport, one of Brazil’s newest container terminals in the <a>Port of Santos</a>, is looking to bring in a new partner to spread the risk of running the operation against a background of falling box volumes in Brazil, sharp falls in profitable imports, and overcapacity at Santos.The terminal also needs more investors because its largest shareholder, Odebrecht Transport is part of the Odebrecht Group, a company whose CEO and president Marcelo Odebrecht was arrested as part of the Car Wash scandal involving the state oil company Petrobas and titans of industry and policy. The arrest of Odebrecht has tarnished the namesake...

Embraport, one of Brazil’s newest container terminals in the Port of Santos , is looking to bring in a new partner to spread the risk of running the operation against a background of falling box volumes in Brazil, sharp falls in profitable imports, and overcapacity at Santos. The terminal also needs more investors because its largest shareholder, Odebrecht Transport is part of the Odebrecht Group, a company whose CEO and president Marcelo Odebrecht was arrested as part of the Car Wash scandal involving the state oil company Petrobas and titans of industry and policy. The arrest of Odebrecht has tarnished the namesake brand and taken a serious toll on the firm’s revenues both domestically and internationally, forcing the company to raise cash, according to a source close to Embraport quoted in the respected Brazilian financial newspaper Valor Economico. Embraport’s location on a greenfield site and ample room to grow on the left bank of the port gave it an immediate advantage over its competitors Libra Terminais, Rodrimar and Ecoporto, which are cramped together on the right bank. As a result, Embraport has steadily built up its market share of the Santos container pie since its opening. Its market share has risen from 6 percent at the end of 2013, to 14 percent for 2014 and 16 percent at the end of 2015. However, that rise has not been as dramatic as the other new kid on the block, Brasil Terminal Portuaria, which now holds 31 percent of the overall market at 1.14 million TEUs at the end of 2015, up from 21 percent at end of 2014 and the 3 percent recorded at the end of 2013. Embraport and BTP came online in 2013 when it was believed Santos would continue to grow by 10 percent or more each year, but that has now proved to be a pipe dream owing to a poorly performing economy beset by political and economic problems mostly arising from the scandal. Embraport and Santos as a whole are also facing stiff competition for container loadings from Paranagua, the next major port to the south. Overcapacity and a lack of growth have forced a roughly 20 percent cut in terminal handling charges, hitting terminal profits hard. A shipping agent who works closely with Embraport said that he too had heard from reliable sources that DP World and Odebrecht Transport were seeking to refinance Embraport. “The container business in Santos is not as lucrative as it was a couple of years ago because of the oversupply of capacity, but also the devaluation of the real, which is having a bad impact on imports,” the agent told JOC.com. “This is really hurting the bottom line for terminals like Embraport, who can make a lot of money from storing import boxes. Bringing in fresh money makes a lot of sense to spread the debt and share the risk.” Embraport is a joint venture between Odebrecht Transport and DP World, with Odebrecht holding 66.6 percent of the company and DP World the remainder. The terminal operator had debts of around 2.2 billion reais ($614.3 million) as of October and its main creditors are the Inter-American Development Bank and Brazilian state-owned banks Caixa Economica and the BNDES, according to Embraport. The 33 percent share Odebrecht Transport is considering selling is worth around 1 billion reais, according to Valor Economico. So Far DP World and Odebrecht Transport have spent 2.3 billion reais on the 2.3 million square foot site, which currently has 2,142 feet of berthing length and annual capacity for 1.2 million TEUs, with another 3.2 million square feet to expand when the time is right. Contact Rob Ward at rcward788@btinternet.com .

International ports

Scandal forces Brazil terminal operator to consider sale of shares

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">Executives from CSX and Norfolk Southern say that while the market is no longer as strongly pro-shipper as it was a year ago, conditions have yet to shift in favor of rail carriers.</div>

Executives from CSX and Norfolk Southern say that while the market is no longer as strongly pro-shipper as it was a year ago, conditions have yet to shift in favor of rail carriers.

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<div class="phx-topic">Two Class I railroads acknowledged this week they have been unable to raise rates on shippers as much as they had hoped, citing a persistently weak market in the competing truckload sector. Executives from CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern Railway (NS), speaking at the J.P. Morgan Industrials Conference, said that while the market is no longer as strongly pro-shipper as it was a year ago, conditions have yet to shift in favor of rail carriers. “It’s less bad than it’s been in the last couple of years,” CSX CFO Sean Pelkey said. “We’re seeing pricing flat to up a little bit, which is encouraging. We have not seen that for a couple of years now … [but it’s] probably not what many had hoped going into the year.” Intermodal contract rates averaged $1.48 per mile in February, according to the Journal of Commerce Intermodal Savings Index, down from $1.54 per mile a year earlier. But when fuel surcharges were excluded, average contract rates remained flat year over year. Diesel prices in February were 36 cents per gallon lower than in the same month of 2024. <div class="wrapper-narrow"><dynamic-object type="jocchartid" resource-id="ea6d4c62-90a1-4a5f-8fb1-9f00b53850b0"></dynamic-object></div>Industry analysts are growing <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/tariff-uncertainty-casts-shadow-on-us-trucking-demand-pricing-5962283">less optimistic</a> that the trucking market will strengthen in the second quarter, citing concerns that geopolitical tensions could lead to an economic downturn. Those concerns have also led to US retailers <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/tariff-uncertainty-prompts-us-retailers-to-downgrade-spring-import-forecast-5961648">downgrading</a> their forecasts for import volume this spring. CSX and Norfolk Southern face challenges in attracting business when trucking rates are depressed because they operate short-haul lanes where the cost difference between truck and rail is much narrower. “[When] you talk about truck pricing, we’re not really expecting a big rebound there anytime soon. That’s not in our base scenario,” NS CFO Jason Zampi said at the J.P. Morgan event. To win business, Zampi said Norfolk Southern must “provide consistent, reliable service that the customer can trust to be more truck-like.” <h3>New wave of annual bids coming </h3>It will soon become clear whether intermodal providers can secure rate increases across the US. After intermodal marketing companies were <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/intermodal-providers-navigate-tough-pricing-environment-at-start-of-year-5922679">disappointed</a> that first wave of contract bids fell short of expectations in January and February, a second group of shippers will negotiate and finalize annual agreements with carriers <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/jb-hunt-preparing-customers-for-boost-in-contract-rail-rates-in-2025-5925181">between April and June</a>. So far, intermodal carriers have proposed rate increases but have largely retreated following pushback during the bid process, according to several shippers who attended the Retail Industry Leaders Association conference in February and spoke with the Journal of Commerce at TPM25. Contact Ari Ashe at <a href="mailto:ari.ashe@spglobal.com">ari.ashe@spglobal.com</a>. </div>

Two Class I railroads acknowledged this week they have been unable to raise rates on shippers as much as they had hoped, citing a persistently weak market in the competing truckload sector. Executives from CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern Railway (NS), speaking at the J.P. Morgan Industrials Conference, said that while the market is no longer as strongly pro-shipper as it was a year ago, conditions have yet to shift in favor of rail carriers. “It’s less bad than it’s been in the last couple of years,” CSX CFO Sean Pelkey said. “We’re seeing pricing flat to up a little bit, which is encouraging. We have not seen that for a couple of years now … [but it’s] probably not what many had hoped going into the year.” Intermodal contract rates averaged $1.48 per mile in February, according to the Journal of Commerce Intermodal Savings Index, down from $1.54 per mile a year earlier. But when fuel surcharges were excluded, average contract rates remained flat year over year. Diesel prices in February were 36 cents per gallon lower than in the same month of 2024. Industry analysts are growing less optimistic that the trucking market will strengthen in the second quarter, citing concerns that geopolitical tensions could lead to an economic downturn. Those concerns have also led to US retailers downgrading their forecasts for import volume this spring. CSX and Norfolk Southern face challenges in attracting business when trucking rates are depressed because they operate short-haul lanes where the cost difference between truck and rail is much narrower. “[When] you talk about truck pricing, we’re not really expecting a big rebound there anytime soon. That’s not in our base scenario,” NS CFO Jason Zampi said at the J.P. Morgan event. To win business, Zampi said Norfolk Southern must “provide consistent, reliable service that the customer can trust to be more truck-like.” New wave of annual bids coming It will soon become clear whether intermodal providers can secure rate increases across the US. After intermodal marketing companies were disappointed that first wave of contract bids fell short of expectations in January and February, a second group of shippers will negotiate and finalize annual agreements with carriers between April and June . So far, intermodal carriers have proposed rate increases but have largely retreated following pushback during the bid process, according to several shippers who attended the Retail Industry Leaders Association conference in February and spoke with the Journal of Commerce at TPM25. Contact Ari Ashe at ari.ashe@spglobal.com .

North-American rail

Intermodal providers

Railroads acknowledge little movement on intermodal contract rates

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">Some analysts see green shoots that could signal higher US freight demand, but those encouraging signs remain fragile in an uncertain economy.</div>

Some analysts see green shoots that could signal higher US freight demand, but those encouraging signs remain fragile in an uncertain economy.

<div class="phx-topic">After a nearly three-year downcycle, the US trucking industry is on a slow road to recovery in terms of rates. But that road is getting harder to see through economic headwinds. The potential impact of US tariffs on businesses and consumers and even renewed concerns about a possible recession are shaking recent freight market optimism. Truckload rates may be rising on a year-over-year basis, but not quickly. And freight demand remains weak for both truckload and less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers. <div class="wrapper-narrow"><dynamic-object type="jocchartid" resource-id="dedbcf3e-8b82-4428-b33b-3fce22dd27e0"></dynamic-object></div>Some analysts believe demand could rise and rate gains could accelerate as early as the second quarter, while others expect improvements will be delayed until the second half, or even 2026. “We were pretty optimistic going into 2025, but we’ve become less optimistic,” said Lee Klaskow, senior analyst for transportation and logistics at Bloomberg Intelligence. “The sky isn’t falling, but there is hail out there,” Klaskow said during the Journal of Commerce’s TPM25 conference in Long Beach last week as the Trump administration began implementing tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China. “What’s going on in Washington will have significant effects on consumers because it is going to be inflationary, assuming the tariffs are implemented,” he said. Since last week, the White House has implemented tariffs while postponing import taxes on some commodities and industries. The list of prospective tariffs is still expanding. The tariffs, even when postponed, <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/tpm25-chaos-erupts-as-us-tariffs-disrupt-cross-border-trucking-with-mexico-canada-5957555">are creating supply chain disruption</a> as US importers try to pull goods, including manufacturing inputs, into the US ahead of tariff deadlines. Avery Vise, vice president of trucking at FTR Transportation Intelligence, calls those tariff-related disruptions “distortions” that must be considered when forecasting. “We do expect the market to improve over the next year, but we have to take out all the potential distortions until we can get more data,” Vise said Wednesday. Rapidly increasing spot truckload rates in lanes <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/cross-border-spot-truck-rates-rise-as-shippers-ride-tariff-rollercoaster-5959754">between the US and Canada</a> are among those distortions, as are delays in getting imports from Mexico into the US. FTR has forecast that truckload rates will rise 3% in 2025, after falling 2.5% last year, with spot rates rising 6% and contract rates 2%. “It’s not a bad market for carriers, but it’s not improving yet,” Vise said. “I would venture it’s not likely to accelerate unless we see some stronger data than we’re seeing.” Even Norfolk Southern Railway (NS), which must compete against truckload rates to capture intermodal business, has acknowledged the stubbornly tepid market for carriers. “The intermodal side is so truck competitive and we don’t have any kind of significant rebound built into our plan,” NS CFO Jason Zampi said Wednesday at the J.P. Morgan Industrials Conference. <h3>Searching for demand triggers </h3>The pace and extent of trucking’s recovery is important to shippers trying to plan their transportation budgets for 2025 and beyond in an uncertain market. Shippers tell the Journal of Commerce they approached 2025 expecting an inflection in demand and pricing — one they thought would take place in 2024. Now many shippers are pushing expectations for higher demand and transportation costs to 2026. Logistics provider RXO is confident the truckload market is heading upward, despite any disruptions caused by US tariffs. Spot rates in the fourth quarter were up 11.6% on average year over year, according to the most recent RXO Curve forecast. That double-digit jump followed a 5.8% increase in the third quarter. RXO expects mid-single-digit percentage growth in pricing in 2025, although spot rates could break higher, Corey Klujsza, vice president of pricing and procurement at RXO, said in an interview this week. Year over year, spot pricing was up about 12% in February, he said. Truckload spot rates dropped in seasonal fashion in February, but truckload capacity continues to tighten, with more small carriers leaving the market, he said. That should drive spot rates higher, eventually pulling up contract rates, according to RXO. “It’s still a challenging environment without a doubt, but I believe we’re pretty close to what I would call a supply-demand equilibrium,” Klujsza said. He sees signs that freight demand is set to grow, perhaps spurred by several separate demand triggers rather than just one. “The consumer remains relatively resilient, and we think we’re in the early innings of [inventory] restocking,” Klujsza said. “That can be part of a demand trigger as we go into the second quarter.” Others are more skeptical. “You need some sort of a shock [to spark demand],” Klaskow said at TPM25. Consumer confidence has been shaken. The Conference Board in February reported the largest monthly decline in its consumer confidence index since August 2021. “When I think of past capacity crunches, they’ve been man-made,” Jeff Tucker, president and CEO of logistics provider Tucker Company Worldwide, said at TPM25. He cited changes in truck driver hours-of-service rules in 2004 and the electronic logging device mandate in 2017 as examples of actions that helped tighten capacity. This year, “I don’t see anything from a regulatory or legislative standpoint that would change things in a dramatic fashion,” Tucker said. <h3>PMIs rising</h3>Beyond inventory restocking and consumer spending, Klujsza pointed to rising industrial production and new orders as potential demand triggers. The Purchasing Managers’ Indexes (PMIs) published by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) and S&amp;P Global Market Intelligence both were positive in February, the second straight month of expansion. <div class="wrapper-narrow"><dynamic-object type="jocchartid" resource-id="69ef0622-ac2e-40dd-b820-01f070762262"></dynamic-object></div>The PMIs are important as industrial production represents about 58% of total US truck tonnage, according to the Commodity Flow Census from the US Census Bureau. Klaskow called the PMI a leading indicator of LTL demand. “That’s important to us, as 60% of our shipments are industrial freight,” Adam Satterfield, CFO of LTL provider Old Dominion Freight Line (ODFL), said in an interview Wednesday. ODFL’s tonnage and shipment count dropped year over year in the first two months of the first quarter, but both measures increased sequentially from January to February. “[The increases were] higher than our 10-year average increase for those months,” Satterfield said. US manufacturing expansion in February was supported by increases in both production and new orders, said S&amp;P Global, parent company of the Journal of Commerce. Some of the order activity may have been driven by advanced purchases ahead of likely price increases and supply disruption related to potential US tariffs, S&amp;P Global said. The S&amp;P Global PMI rose to 52.7% in February from 52.1% in January, while the ISM PMI fell slightly from 50.9% to 50.3%. Any PMI reading higher than 50 represents expansion. Manufacturing improvements, however welcome, may only be “skin deep,” Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&amp;P Global Market Intelligence, said in a statement in early March. “Production and purchasing were often buoyed by companies and their customers building inventory to beat price hikes and supply issues caused by tariffs,” said Williamson, adding that higher factory input costs are being passed onto consumers. Contact William B. Cassidy at <a href="mailto:bill.cassidy@spglobal.com">bill.cassidy@spglobal.com</a>.Senior Editor Ari Ashe contributed to this report. </div>

After a nearly three-year downcycle, the US trucking industry is on a slow road to recovery in terms of rates. But that road is getting harder to see through economic headwinds. The potential impact of US tariffs on businesses and consumers and even renewed concerns about a possible recession are shaking recent freight market optimism. Truckload rates may be rising on a year-over-year basis, but not quickly. And freight demand remains weak for both truckload and less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers. Some analysts believe demand could rise and rate gains could accelerate as early as the second quarter, while others expect improvements will be delayed until the second half, or even 2026. “We were pretty optimistic going into 2025, but we’ve become less optimistic,” said Lee Klaskow, senior analyst for transportation and logistics at Bloomberg Intelligence. “The sky isn’t falling, but there is hail out there,” Klaskow said during the Journal of Commerce’s TPM25 conference in Long Beach last week as the Trump administration began implementing tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China. “What’s going on in Washington will have significant effects on consumers because it is going to be inflationary, assuming the tariffs are implemented,” he said. Since last week, the White House has implemented tariffs while postponing import taxes on some commodities and industries. The list of prospective tariffs is still expanding. The tariffs, even when postponed, are creating supply chain disruption as US importers try to pull goods, including manufacturing inputs, into the US ahead of tariff deadlines. Avery Vise, vice president of trucking at FTR Transportation Intelligence, calls those tariff-related disruptions “distortions” that must be considered when forecasting. “We do expect the market to improve over the next year, but we have to take out all the potential distortions until we can get more data,” Vise said Wednesday. Rapidly increasing spot truckload rates in lanes between the US and Canada are among those distortions, as are delays in getting imports from Mexico into the US. FTR has forecast that truckload rates will rise 3% in 2025, after falling 2.5% last year, with spot rates rising 6% and contract rates 2%. “It’s not a bad market for carriers, but it’s not improving yet,” Vise said. “I would venture it’s not likely to accelerate unless we see some stronger data than we’re seeing.” Even Norfolk Southern Railway (NS), which must compete against truckload rates to capture intermodal business, has acknowledged the stubbornly tepid market for carriers. “The intermodal side is so truck competitive and we don’t have any kind of significant rebound built into our plan,” NS CFO Jason Zampi said Wednesday at the J.P. Morgan Industrials Conference. Searching for demand triggers The pace and extent of trucking’s recovery is important to shippers trying to plan their transportation budgets for 2025 and beyond in an uncertain market. Shippers tell the Journal of Commerce they approached 2025 expecting an inflection in demand and pricing — one they thought would take place in 2024. Now many shippers are pushing expectations for higher demand and transportation costs to 2026. Logistics provider RXO is confident the truckload market is heading upward, despite any disruptions caused by US tariffs. Spot rates in the fourth quarter were up 11.6% on average year over year, according to the most recent RXO Curve forecast. That double-digit jump followed a 5.8% increase in the third quarter. RXO expects mid-single-digit percentage growth in pricing in 2025, although spot rates could break higher, Corey Klujsza, vice president of pricing and procurement at RXO, said in an interview this week. Year over year, spot pricing was up about 12% in February, he said. Truckload spot rates dropped in seasonal fashion in February, but truckload capacity continues to tighten, with more small carriers leaving the market, he said. That should drive spot rates higher, eventually pulling up contract rates, according to RXO. “It’s still a challenging environment without a doubt, but I believe we’re pretty close to what I would call a supply-demand equilibrium,” Klujsza said. He sees signs that freight demand is set to grow, perhaps spurred by several separate demand triggers rather than just one. “The consumer remains relatively resilient, and we think we’re in the early innings of [inventory] restocking,” Klujsza said. “That can be part of a demand trigger as we go into the second quarter.” Others are more skeptical. “You need some sort of a shock [to spark demand],” Klaskow said at TPM25. Consumer confidence has been shaken. The Conference Board in February reported the largest monthly decline in its consumer confidence index since August 2021. “When I think of past capacity crunches, they’ve been man-made,” Jeff Tucker, president and CEO of logistics provider Tucker Company Worldwide, said at TPM25. He cited changes in truck driver hours-of-service rules in 2004 and the electronic logging device mandate in 2017 as examples of actions that helped tighten capacity. This year, “I don’t see anything from a regulatory or legislative standpoint that would change things in a dramatic fashion,” Tucker said. PMIs rising Beyond inventory restocking and consumer spending, Klujsza pointed to rising industrial production and new orders as potential demand triggers. The Purchasing Managers’ Indexes (PMIs) published by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) and S&P Global Market Intelligence both were positive in February, the second straight month of expansion. The PMIs are important as industrial production represents about 58% of total US truck tonnage, according to the Commodity Flow Census from the US Census Bureau. Klaskow called the PMI a leading indicator of LTL demand. “That’s important to us, as 60% of our shipments are industrial freight,” Adam Satterfield, CFO of LTL provider Old Dominion Freight Line (ODFL), said in an interview Wednesday. ODFL’s tonnage and shipment count dropped year over year in the first two months of the first quarter, but both measures increased sequentially from January to February. “[The increases were] higher than our 10-year average increase for those months,” Satterfield said. US manufacturing expansion in February was supported by increases in both production and new orders, said S&P Global, parent company of the Journal of Commerce. Some of the order activity may have been driven by advanced purchases ahead of likely price increases and supply disruption related to potential US tariffs, S&P Global said. The S&P Global PMI rose to 52.7% in February from 52.1% in January, while the ISM PMI fell slightly from 50.9% to 50.3%. Any PMI reading higher than 50 represents expansion. Manufacturing improvements, however welcome, may only be “skin deep,” Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said in a statement in early March. “Production and purchasing were often buoyed by companies and their customers building inventory to beat price hikes and supply issues caused by tariffs,” said Williamson, adding that higher factory input costs are being passed onto consumers. Contact William B. Cassidy at bill.cassidy@spglobal.com .Senior Editor Ari Ashe contributed to this report.

Trucking News

Truckload

Surface

Tariff uncertainty casts shadow on US trucking demand, pricing

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">The Cosco Shipping subsidiary recorded another highly profitable year but pointed to growing geopolitical uncertainties and industry-specific challenges that will test container shipping in the year ahead.</div>

The Cosco Shipping subsidiary recorded another highly profitable year but pointed to growing geopolitical uncertainties and industry-specific challenges that will test container shipping in the year ahead.

<div class="phx-topic">OOCL reported a 2024 net profit of $2.5 billion Thursday, an 88% increase over the previous year that the ocean carrier attributed to strong import demand in developed economies and rapid trade growth in emerging markets. But the Hong Kong-listed subsidiary of Cosco Shipping Holdings was quick to highlight the growing geopolitical uncertainties and industry-specific challenges that threaten to reshape global supply chains and test container shipping in the year ahead. “Potential overcapacity may arise as new vessels are delivered, especially when the Suez Canal reopens,” OOCL said in its earnings statement. Other areas of concern included steadily tightening environmental regulations, the impact on supply chains from restructured carrier alliances and trade policies from the new US administration that will impact the global economy and supply chain “in the short and long run.” “These factors do not exist or function independently,” OOCL said. “They are interactively intertwined, adding to the complexity of the shipping market ... their effects should not be underestimated.” Still, that complexity helped OOCL post a significantly improved set of annual results compared with 2023. Revenue was up 28% year over year at $10.7 billion, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) increased 60% to $3.5 billion and earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) were up 86% at $2.6 billion. Total volumes handled by the carrier increased 4% to 7.6 million TEUs. <h3>Shifting supply-demand dynamics </h3>Commenting on 2024, OOCL said the diversions around southern Africa as carriers avoided the Red Sea added transit time to voyages, while longshore labor uncertainty along the US East and Gulf coasts and the threat of new tariffs under the Trump administration led to a rise in frontloading by US importers. “Geopolitical uncertainties not only shifted the dynamics between supply and demand for the entire industry, but also affected people’s expectations and behaviors,” OOCL noted. While detours around the Cape of Good Hope absorbed about 10% of available ocean capacity, they disrupted the on-time performance of carriers that was further impacted by poor weather in Asia and Europe. The resulting port congestion put further pressure on supply chains, OOCL said. “These interconnected factors helped push freight rates to a post-pandemic peak around the middle of the year, especially on trans-Pacific routes,” the carrier said. Average Asia-US West Coast rates began 2024 at $1,246 per FEU, rose to a high of $7,411/FEU on July 4 and ended the year at $5,200/FEU, according to rate benchmarking platform Xeneta. OOCL has been rapidly increasing its owned capacity, taking delivery of six 24,188-TEU ships and one 16,828-TEU vessel. The carrier also chartered in six new 13,000-TEU series vessels that will begin operating in 2026. Cosco Shipping Holdings has not yet released its 2024 financial results, but the China state-owned carrier said in January <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/cosco-forecasts-95-jump-in-2024-net-profit-on-robust-volumes-freight-rates-5920588">it was expecting $7.5 billion in net profit</a>, a 95% year-over-year increase. Contact Greg Knowler at <a href="mailto:greg.knowler@spglobal.com">greg.knowler@spglobal.com</a>. </div>

OOCL reported a 2024 net profit of $2.5 billion Thursday, an 88% increase over the previous year that the ocean carrier attributed to strong import demand in developed economies and rapid trade growth in emerging markets. But the Hong Kong-listed subsidiary of Cosco Shipping Holdings was quick to highlight the growing geopolitical uncertainties and industry-specific challenges that threaten to reshape global supply chains and test container shipping in the year ahead. “Potential overcapacity may arise as new vessels are delivered, especially when the Suez Canal reopens,” OOCL said in its earnings statement. Other areas of concern included steadily tightening environmental regulations, the impact on supply chains from restructured carrier alliances and trade policies from the new US administration that will impact the global economy and supply chain “in the short and long run.” “These factors do not exist or function independently,” OOCL said. “They are interactively intertwined, adding to the complexity of the shipping market ... their effects should not be underestimated.” Still, that complexity helped OOCL post a significantly improved set of annual results compared with 2023. Revenue was up 28% year over year at $10.7 billion, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) increased 60% to $3.5 billion and earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) were up 86% at $2.6 billion. Total volumes handled by the carrier increased 4% to 7.6 million TEUs. Shifting supply-demand dynamics Commenting on 2024, OOCL said the diversions around southern Africa as carriers avoided the Red Sea added transit time to voyages, while longshore labor uncertainty along the US East and Gulf coasts and the threat of new tariffs under the Trump administration led to a rise in frontloading by US importers. “Geopolitical uncertainties not only shifted the dynamics between supply and demand for the entire industry, but also affected people’s expectations and behaviors,” OOCL noted. While detours around the Cape of Good Hope absorbed about 10% of available ocean capacity, they disrupted the on-time performance of carriers that was further impacted by poor weather in Asia and Europe. The resulting port congestion put further pressure on supply chains, OOCL said. “These interconnected factors helped push freight rates to a post-pandemic peak around the middle of the year, especially on trans-Pacific routes,” the carrier said. Average Asia-US West Coast rates began 2024 at $1,246 per FEU, rose to a high of $7,411/FEU on July 4 and ended the year at $5,200/FEU, according to rate benchmarking platform Xeneta. OOCL has been rapidly increasing its owned capacity, taking delivery of six 24,188-TEU ships and one 16,828-TEU vessel. The carrier also chartered in six new 13,000-TEU series vessels that will begin operating in 2026. Cosco Shipping Holdings has not yet released its 2024 financial results, but the China state-owned carrier said in January it was expecting $7.5 billion in net profit , a 95% year-over-year increase. Contact Greg Knowler at greg.knowler@spglobal.com .

Container Shipping News

Container lines

Asia-Europe

Trans-Pacific

Maritime

OOCL banks $2.5 billion 2024 net profit on solid demand, high rates

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">The Dubai-based terminal operator’s end-to-end supply chain strategy is paying dividends with strategic investment in forwarding services attracting business from high value verticals. </div>

The Dubai-based terminal operator’s end-to-end supply chain strategy is paying dividends with strategic investment in forwarding services attracting business from high value verticals.

<div class="phx-topic">DP World on Thursday reported solid gains in 2024 revenue and operating profit that the terminal operator attributed to a focus on handling high-margin cargo and the continued expansion of its end-to-end reach deeper into shipper supply chains. Group chairman and CEO Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem said the terminal operator had to navigate a complex geopolitical landscape in 2024, but its growing logistics capabilities enabled the company to add value and build lucrative long-term relationships with cargo owners. “We have expanded into new verticals, including chemicals and retail, bringing our total number of focused verticals to eight and covering nearly 50% of global GDP,” bin Sulayem said in an earnings statement. “This strategy is positioning DP World for sustained long-term growth and value creation,” he added. “We continue to strengthen our logistics platform, attracting more cargo owners with end-to-end, tailored solutions that drive efficiency and improve the flow of trade.” The Dubai-based company posted $20 billion in revenue for 2024, up almost 10% year over year and a record for the company, while earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) were up 6.7% at $5.4 billion. Net profit was down 2% at $1.5 billion due to “higher finance costs,” while container throughput increased 8.3% to 88.3 million TEUs. Infrastructure investment in key growth markets has taken DP World’s global container handling capacity past 100 million TEUs, with capital expenditures of $2.2 billion made during 2024. The capital expenditure budget for 2025 is $2.5 billion, and investment will be made mainly at Jebel Ali, the Jebel Ali Freezone and Drydocks World in the United Arab Emirates; Tuna Tekra in India; London Gateway in the UK; Ndayane in Senegal; and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. Bin Sulayem said strategic investments in forwarding services have increased DP World’s network coverage to more than 200 locations across most global trade routes, a calculated move away from the traditional asset-light approach of global forwarders. The terminal operator has been aggressively expanding its logistics exposure, integrating its infrastructure ownership in terminals, warehouses, rail and trucking around the world into the expanded forwarding product. DP World last September <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/dp-world-adds-hong-kong-forwarder-to-growing-3pl-network-5717969">acquired Hong Kong-based supply chain solutions provider Cargo Services Far East</a>, adding a China specialist forwarder with products covering origin purchase order management, ocean and air freight, and warehousing for a diverse range of sectors. DP World’s foray into the forwarding business <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/psa-leveraging-forwarder-acquisition-to-serve-shippers-directly-5242073">mirrors moves made by other global port operators</a> such as Singapore-based PSA, Manila-based International Container Terminal Services Inc. and Maersk’s APM Terminals. Contact Greg Knowler at <a href="mailto:greg.knowler@spglobal.com">greg.knowler@spglobal.com</a>. </div>

DP World on Thursday reported solid gains in 2024 revenue and operating profit that the terminal operator attributed to a focus on handling high-margin cargo and the continued expansion of its end-to-end reach deeper into shipper supply chains. Group chairman and CEO Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem said the terminal operator had to navigate a complex geopolitical landscape in 2024, but its growing logistics capabilities enabled the company to add value and build lucrative long-term relationships with cargo owners. “We have expanded into new verticals, including chemicals and retail, bringing our total number of focused verticals to eight and covering nearly 50% of global GDP,” bin Sulayem said in an earnings statement. “This strategy is positioning DP World for sustained long-term growth and value creation,” he added. “We continue to strengthen our logistics platform, attracting more cargo owners with end-to-end, tailored solutions that drive efficiency and improve the flow of trade.” The Dubai-based company posted $20 billion in revenue for 2024, up almost 10% year over year and a record for the company, while earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) were up 6.7% at $5.4 billion. Net profit was down 2% at $1.5 billion due to “higher finance costs,” while container throughput increased 8.3% to 88.3 million TEUs. Infrastructure investment in key growth markets has taken DP World’s global container handling capacity past 100 million TEUs, with capital expenditures of $2.2 billion made during 2024. The capital expenditure budget for 2025 is $2.5 billion, and investment will be made mainly at Jebel Ali, the Jebel Ali Freezone and Drydocks World in the United Arab Emirates; Tuna Tekra in India; London Gateway in the UK; Ndayane in Senegal; and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. Bin Sulayem said strategic investments in forwarding services have increased DP World’s network coverage to more than 200 locations across most global trade routes, a calculated move away from the traditional asset-light approach of global forwarders. The terminal operator has been aggressively expanding its logistics exposure, integrating its infrastructure ownership in terminals, warehouses, rail and trucking around the world into the expanded forwarding product. DP World last September acquired Hong Kong-based supply chain solutions provider Cargo Services Far East , adding a China specialist forwarder with products covering origin purchase order management, ocean and air freight, and warehousing for a diverse range of sectors. DP World’s foray into the forwarding business mirrors moves made by other global port operators such as Singapore-based PSA, Manila-based International Container Terminal Services Inc. and Maersk’s APM Terminals. Contact Greg Knowler at greg.knowler@spglobal.com .

Port News

Expansion into logistics underpins DP World’s strong 2024 result

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">While shippers might have expected ocean carriers to make application programming interfaces widely available by 2025, negative incentives have inhibited that progress. </div>

While shippers might have expected ocean carriers to make application programming interfaces widely available by 2025, negative incentives have inhibited that progress.

<div class="phx-topic">Visibility providers are having to meet the ever-expanding real-time ocean freight data needs of their forwarder and shipper customers without measurable progress from shipping lines in establishing application programming interfaces (APIs) to convey key milestones. Instead, those vendors are having to cobble together data via web scraping, electronic data interchange (EDI) messages, CSV files and automatic ship identification (AIS) information to paint a predictive picture for those customers. Whereas the industry might have expected shipping lines to have provided APIs to allow easy access to container milestones by now, the reality is that there is a large variance between the availability, completeness and quality of the APIs that do exist. “The top 10 ocean carriers, they’re moving a significant volume of containers,” Akshay Dodeja, CEO of visibility provider Terminal49, said at the Journal of Commerce’s TPM25 conference in Long Beach last week. “And they’re already investing a lot in their own infrastructure. We’re talking about millions and millions of dollars of investment to maybe just break even on providing those APIs, so I can empathize with them. There are also maybe even negative incentives to develop APIs.” Dodeja said it might not even make sense for carriers to invest in APIs given the direction the software engineering world is headed. “On the customer-facing side, we’re way beyond APIs,” he said. “We actually don’t even encourage APIs, because we completely sync everything to their data warehouses, so the more sophisticated buyers that are using us are warehousing all their data into [data warehouse providers] Snowflake, BigQuery, or Google Cloud.” The move by shippers and forwarders to build data warehouses is focused on being able to test new software vendors easily but also to drive faster and more accurate reporting. “That’s not happening via API,” Dodeja said. “Now, we just sync everything to a data warehouse every hour. Ultimately, programmatic data will make supply chains more efficient.” <h3>Carrier dilemma </h3>Anand Medepalli, chief product officer at visibility provider Shippeo, said that ocean carriers are in a bit of a dilemma when it comes to investing in APIs to connect with the market. On one hand, in EDI there are existing and trusted standardized means for conveying container milestones. On the other hand, creating APIs would allow a carrier more control over who is accessing location and status data versus having third parties web scraping to get that data. “[Scraping] is the pull mechanism that we use today,” Medepalli said at TPM25. “If ocean carriers do have an API strategy, they have to give credentials and therefore can control access. They know who is coming and why, they can even direct them to a certain area of the website so that the website is not getting heavy hits at the wrong time. Ocean carriers have got tons of good reasons to do this right, but they really need to get their heads together, come up with one standard that everybody can subscribe to, and then become reliable.” In the interim, users of milestone data are relying on aggregators in lieu of setting up feeds of their own. “From a forwarder perspective, I’m never going to integrate directly with a carrier,” Jamie Andrade, senior vice president of product management at SEKO Logistics, said at TPM25. “Ultimately, I don’t care how [my visibility provider] gets the data. They can pull it off of a CSV or an Excel spreadsheet, but they need to give me an API.” There’s also the issue of maintaining APIs. “We don’t have the resources to go do all of the individual carrier APIs, and then have to maintain all of that,” she said. “That’s why there’s value in going through an integrator. But then if the carrier charges you, your prices go up, and yes, my price goes up.” Andrade also mentioned that many forwarders are essentially “double paying” for visibility data because their freight management systems also provide visibility that can’t be turned off, but that’s not always good enough for their needs. <h3>Context needed </h3>Medepalli said another reason that ocean carrier APIs haven’t progressed as fast as the industry may have hoped is that visibility providers are able to add context to simple milestone information for their customers in ways that carriers don’t. “Visibility, for the sake of visibility, is not interesting,” he said. “We just don’t take someone’s data and massage it and then throw it to them. We actually contextualize it. We integrate with other systems to make sure that this data makes sense.” Medepalli added that using other data shows that the API data from carriers often isn’t of a high enough quality upon which to base a prediction. “If an AIS position says that the vessel is there, does it correspond to what the carrier is saying?” he said. “Sometimes, it’s the reverse problem. We actually correlate other data, like AIS data, to make sure that the data we are getting from the carrier API is actually a good quality.” Ultimately, Dodeja said he believes shipping lines will have to adapt to an environment where quality data is a given for customers. Larger shippers and forwarders have the internal teams to manage that data directly and small to midsize companies will use visibility aggregators. “Not every customer solution [for carriers] is a massive financial opportunity,” he said. “But some things just make a lot of sense because customers want it, and we now are moving towards more programmatic access to this data to integrate it into their workflows.” Contact Eric Johnson at <a href="mailto:eric.johnson@spglobal.com">eric.johnson@spglobal.com</a>. </div>

Visibility providers are having to meet the ever-expanding real-time ocean freight data needs of their forwarder and shipper customers without measurable progress from shipping lines in establishing application programming interfaces (APIs) to convey key milestones. Instead, those vendors are having to cobble together data via web scraping, electronic data interchange (EDI) messages, CSV files and automatic ship identification (AIS) information to paint a predictive picture for those customers. Whereas the industry might have expected shipping lines to have provided APIs to allow easy access to container milestones by now, the reality is that there is a large variance between the availability, completeness and quality of the APIs that do exist. “The top 10 ocean carriers, they’re moving a significant volume of containers,” Akshay Dodeja, CEO of visibility provider Terminal49, said at the Journal of Commerce’s TPM25 conference in Long Beach last week. “And they’re already investing a lot in their own infrastructure. We’re talking about millions and millions of dollars of investment to maybe just break even on providing those APIs, so I can empathize with them. There are also maybe even negative incentives to develop APIs.” Dodeja said it might not even make sense for carriers to invest in APIs given the direction the software engineering world is headed. “On the customer-facing side, we’re way beyond APIs,” he said. “We actually don’t even encourage APIs, because we completely sync everything to their data warehouses, so the more sophisticated buyers that are using us are warehousing all their data into [data warehouse providers] Snowflake, BigQuery, or Google Cloud.” The move by shippers and forwarders to build data warehouses is focused on being able to test new software vendors easily but also to drive faster and more accurate reporting. “That’s not happening via API,” Dodeja said. “Now, we just sync everything to a data warehouse every hour. Ultimately, programmatic data will make supply chains more efficient.” Carrier dilemma Anand Medepalli, chief product officer at visibility provider Shippeo, said that ocean carriers are in a bit of a dilemma when it comes to investing in APIs to connect with the market. On one hand, in EDI there are existing and trusted standardized means for conveying container milestones. On the other hand, creating APIs would allow a carrier more control over who is accessing location and status data versus having third parties web scraping to get that data. “[Scraping] is the pull mechanism that we use today,” Medepalli said at TPM25. “If ocean carriers do have an API strategy, they have to give credentials and therefore can control access. They know who is coming and why, they can even direct them to a certain area of the website so that the website is not getting heavy hits at the wrong time. Ocean carriers have got tons of good reasons to do this right, but they really need to get their heads together, come up with one standard that everybody can subscribe to, and then become reliable.” In the interim, users of milestone data are relying on aggregators in lieu of setting up feeds of their own. “From a forwarder perspective, I’m never going to integrate directly with a carrier,” Jamie Andrade, senior vice president of product management at SEKO Logistics, said at TPM25. “Ultimately, I don’t care how [my visibility provider] gets the data. They can pull it off of a CSV or an Excel spreadsheet, but they need to give me an API.” There’s also the issue of maintaining APIs. “We don’t have the resources to go do all of the individual carrier APIs, and then have to maintain all of that,” she said. “That’s why there’s value in going through an integrator. But then if the carrier charges you, your prices go up, and yes, my price goes up.” Andrade also mentioned that many forwarders are essentially “double paying” for visibility data because their freight management systems also provide visibility that can’t be turned off, but that’s not always good enough for their needs. Context needed Medepalli said another reason that ocean carrier APIs haven’t progressed as fast as the industry may have hoped is that visibility providers are able to add context to simple milestone information for their customers in ways that carriers don’t. “Visibility, for the sake of visibility, is not interesting,” he said. “We just don’t take someone’s data and massage it and then throw it to them. We actually contextualize it. We integrate with other systems to make sure that this data makes sense.” Medepalli added that using other data shows that the API data from carriers often isn’t of a high enough quality upon which to base a prediction. “If an AIS position says that the vessel is there, does it correspond to what the carrier is saying?” he said. “Sometimes, it’s the reverse problem. We actually correlate other data, like AIS data, to make sure that the data we are getting from the carrier API is actually a good quality.” Ultimately, Dodeja said he believes shipping lines will have to adapt to an environment where quality data is a given for customers. Larger shippers and forwarders have the internal teams to manage that data directly and small to midsize companies will use visibility aggregators. “Not every customer solution [for carriers] is a massive financial opportunity,” he said. “But some things just make a lot of sense because customers want it, and we now are moving towards more programmatic access to this data to integrate it into their workflows.” Contact Eric Johnson at eric.johnson@spglobal.com .

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The world of LTL is slow to embrace change. Business anachronisms permeate current supply chain processes. These vestiges of the way things used to work define the LTL freight transportation procurement process of many modern shippers.David Knuth, logistics specialist at IEWC, a global supplier of cable and wire based in Wisconsin, is happy to have modernized the RFP process, automating the entire LTL bidding procedure with Bid$ense, SMC³’s automated truckload and LTL freight transportation sourcing solution. But when prompted, he can still recall what once was.In his previous job, a large part of his duties were consumed by creating an intermodal bid package for carriers. In a spreadsheet, Knuth detailed the company’s volumes lane by lane, taking care to delete any errant keystrokes or misleading data. He would then email out the information to each carrier, taking time to respond to detailed technical questions about the spreadsheet data. Finally, he had to compile all the results, create an algorithm that would compare the carriers on each lane, and award the business.“It was a huge undertaking. It took about four months to do,” Knuth said of the old process. “It was almost a full-time job for that part of the year, every year.”In his new job at IEWC, he sat down with Bid$ense on day one and was amazed at the capabilities. Knuth had never before used a bid tool. SMC³’s latest versions of Bid$ense automate the process even further, taking truckload and LTL RFPs entirely online. The tool draws on RFP best-practices protocols to streamline the bidding communication process, enabling bidding carriers to respond accurately and promptly to shipper requests. The solution also does all the distribution work automatically, electronically submitting shipper bid data to carriers based on their actual service capabilities and performance records. Carriers are alerted with timely prompts for RFP deliverables, so shippers aren’t waiting by the phone for responses.Another benefit of automating the process is the data-cleansing assistance. When Knuth sent spreadsheets to carriers, data errors might cloud the bidding process; he might have to resend data or simply accept a price that did not truly reflect the costs of doing business. Data cleansing is incredibly beneficial, he said.The spreadsheet technique also made bidding analysis an onerous task. Since Bid$ense automates and streamlines the entire RFP process, intensive examination is now simple. SMC³ knows that each bid has more than one best outcome. With uniform responses from each carrier, shippers can quickly rank results and create an unlimited quantity of what-if scenarios to make the optimal procurement decision.Jesse Burnett of Central Garden &amp; Pet experiences many of the same benefits. Founded in 1980, Central Garden &amp; Pet has spent the last three decades growing from a small garden supply company to a provider of a range of products from dog chews and bird seed to soil supplements and natural insecticides. For much of its life, the company shipped these disparate goods via LTL and truckload carriers to retailers throughout the country, relying on each business unit to negotiate directly with their freight transportation providers. This arrangement worked fairly well for a small company, but as Central Garden &amp; Pet expanded, leadership decided to consolidate decision making.Burnett helped centralize the transportation decision making in 2015 with SMC³’s Bid$ense. Before Bid$ense, every business unit operated independently as far as negotiating with carriers.“There were a lot of different things just floating around,” he said. “We didn’t have master agreements in place; no national pricing at all. The pricing from carriers was just all over the place, depending on where you were.”The transformations he saw with Bid$ense were immediate. Burnett has been using the tool about every other year since its implementation at the company. Central Garden and Pet’s $19.6 million 2019 LTL bid saved the company just more than 9 percent when compared to its historical average. For Burnett, though, bid automation extends far beyond savings.“We knew that we weren’t getting the best pricing offer from our carriers just because nothing was centralized,” he continued. “We knew that if we combined everything from all these business units and paired it with one corporate offering, then it would drive some cost benefit with it.”When the company initially decided to centralize bid procurement, executives researched a number of different methodologies and technologies. In the end, though, Burnett found that Bid$ense was both widespread and well known, and that his carrier partners already knew how to use the application. Burnett also highlighted the data-cleansing process as a major benefit, saying the rigorous process ensures that carriers always return the best price.“It definitely has helped drive savings,” he said. “Any time you go out there and you drive that competitiveness with the carriers and they know they’re in a bid environment, it seems to sharpen their pencils.”Transportation procurement is an integral part of the modern supply chain. With Bid$ense, shippers can develop a strategic implementation plan that saves them time and money, but also helps them create strong relationships with their carrier partners. These carriers appreciate the solution’s data-cleansing process; when carriers receive a complete shipment history and future volume forecast, they don’t have to guess on pricing. Carriers that receive more data from shippers get a complete picture of that shipper’s freight, allowing them to accurately plan instead of simply preparing for the worst-case scenario. Clean data presented through an automated system can lead to both bigger shipment savings and a lasting partnership between carrier and customer.Whether customers are looking to streamline over-the-road transportation bidding by automating the RFP process or create an entirely new, centralized sourcing process, Bid$ense has the analytical horsepower to get the job done.SMC³ 2020 Customer Case Study

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Shippers save money, time with automated transportation bidding tools

If there’s one immutable truth in the world of logistics, it’s this: LTL is an inherently complex form of transportation. Tariffs, rates, DIM weights, transit times — it’s enough to confuse even seasoned logistics professionals. The solution to this knowledge gap has historically been on-the-job training or university supply chain education, but for a variety of reasons there is now a pressing need for third-party, remote LTL training that prepares logistics workers for transportation success. Global Scope Can Overlook Local Intricacies In the past, professionals looking to move into a supply chain career learned about the basics of supply chain from universities. However, many of these college supply chain programs are now global in scope, focusing on worldwide supply chain management instead of the intricacies of specialized domestic transportation. And even these programs, which used to be widespread, are becoming less common. LTL is not an industry of broad-brush strokes; supply chain professionals really need a pointillistic understanding of the logistics of LTL in order to excel in the industry. Accelerating Need for Dedicated LTL Education This lack of specified training put the onus on employers to prepare new hires with the LTL knowledge needed to do their jobs. Dedicated LTL study is a necessity, not a luxury. At the same time, changes in LTL and the broader supply chain world are accelerating. The reliance on e-commerce has ballooned since the start of the pandemic, and last-mile LTL shipments and related e-commerce strains on the supply chain won’t diminish once social distancing abates. That genie isn’t going back into the bottle. So supply chain employers need logistics workers that are fully versed in all aspects of the industry, ready to solve unique shipping and delivery problems based on their extensive supply chain knowledge But why care about LTL? It’s been reported that some shippers in today’s world are no longer concerned with what mode is used to ship their goods. A Multimodal Approach Ensures On-Time Delivery This mode agnosticism means supply chain stakeholders have to be well versed in all modes of transportation. As unforeseen weather events and other disruptions, such as protests, become more common, savvy logistics employees will need to be armed with familiarity of all modes, not just the most popular, to ensure that freight is delivered on time, without damage, and in the most financially expedient way possible. Offerings like SMC³’s LTL online education courses cover a wide range of topics from LTL basics and operations to more advanced concepts like pricing analytics and transportation law. The company also has plans to continually refresh content, adding new expert presenters and taking the feedback of students to make the courses even better as time goes on. Learn more about&nbsp;<a href="https://logisticstrainingcenter.com/smc3-courses/" rel="noreferrer" class="joc_admin__link">SMC³’s LTL Online Education program</a>&nbsp;and view the 2021 hybrid schedule, featuring live industry experts,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.smc3.com/onlinelearning2021/" rel="noreferrer" class="joc_admin__link">here.</a>

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Filling the Supply Chain Education Gap with LTL Education Courses

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