Container lines

Could U.S. freight volumes rise and overall economic growth slow?

The struggles of South Korea's largest container lines have created a new top shipowner in the country.

Standard & Poor’s has placed Hapag-Lloyd on negative credit watch.

The new Ocean Alliance will have the largest market shares of critical east-west trades.

The fleet of idled container ships has shrunk slightly as several large vessels laid-up have returned to service, according to Alphaliner.

The CKYHE Alliance members have announced that they will stick together a while longer.

The voyage data recorder from the El Faro, which sank on Oct. 1 in the Bahamas, killing its 33-member crew, was located early Tuesday morning — a development that lately had seemed unlikely to happen because the equipment’s batteries were believed to have expired.

Container ships and the industry have come a long way since the days of the Ideal X and the birth of modern containerization. The biggest initial hurdles to containerization were making the concept work.

The cutoff time for a shipper submitting the verified gross mass information to a carrier will likely be before the general cutoff time being currently applied, according to a CargoSmart study on the new SOLAS rule that will be implemented from July 1.

U.S. agriculture exporters’ push for a so-called “rational” method to a new container-weighing rule suffered a blow after APL said in a guidance to shippers that it wouldn't allow customers to provide the weight of goods and packaging to the container line, which would then add that figure to the tare weight of the container.

As this year’s brutal service contracting season in the eastbound trans-Pacific wound down in mid-April, a frustrated carrier executive said customers were pounding him mercilessly for extended free storage time for containers at the ports, 15 days of free time for containers and chassis at their warehouses and record low freight rates. “It’s crazy out there,” the executive said.

The Port of Charleston says it is in the final stages of tests to see whether the port can provide in-terminal container weighing services for shippers to comply with the new International Maritime Organization container weight rule that goes into effect this July.

Betting on the troubled container shipping industry probably makes more sense than investing in it, and a bookmaker would be salivating at the permutations available to the eight shipping lines “orphaned” by the Ocean Alliance that was formed last week.

Spot rates in the eastbound trans-Pacific eroded this week in the interim period of lackluster import volumes that will continue for the coming month or so until traffic picks up in the summer-fall peak-shipping season.

Hanjin Shipping wants its main creditor, the Korea Development Bank, to take over management of the company to restructure its debts and streamline its operations.

Orient Overseas Container Line’s revenue slumped 17.1 percent in the first quarter even as traffic increased 4.2 percent, highlighting the plunge in ocean freight rates to historic lows that is accelerating consolidation moves across the beleaguered industry.

There was little movement among spot rates on the Asia-North Europe and Asia-Mediterranean trades this week as carriers prepare for the May 1 general rate increases they hope will offer some relief.

The majority of shippers and logistics providers in a CargoSmart survey had no plans to comply with the new container weight rule that will be in effect from July 1, and Drewry found that none of 20 NVOs the analyst met during an April tender process were ready to comply.

Federal Maritime Chairman Mario Cordero expects the U.S. container shipping industry to be prepared for the SOLAS container weight rule that takes effect July 1.

Hapag-Lloyd and United Arab Shipping Company are in merger talks, in a surprise move that will accelerate consolidation in the troubled container shipping industry.

Greek container ship owner Costamare boosted net income by a third in a flat first quarter that saw charter rates slump to historic lows.

Forwarders and shippers have expressed concern that the vessel grouping reshuffle that began with the formation of Ocean Alliance will leave customers with fewer choices and widespread service changes, but did not expect service contracts to be affected.

The much-anticipated launch of a weekly service with six mega-ships, each with a capacity of almost 18,000 twenty-foot-equivalent units, to Long Beach and Oakland is being delayed, having fallen victim to the extremely low freight rates freight rates in the trans-Pacific trade.

Container shipping is in a new era of heavily reduced demand, but bright spots and pockets of growth that provide opportunity for the industry remain, according to Robbert Van Trooijen, chief executive of Maersk Line's Asia-Pacific region.

European shippers, freight forwarders, port authorities and terminal operators have made a joint appeal to their national governments for a coordinated implementation of an international regulation requiring all containers to be weighed before they are loaded onto ships.

Hamburg-Sud’s revenue grew 16.8 percent to 6.1 billion euros ($6.92 billion) in 2015 as Germany’s second-largest ocean carrier reaped the benefits of its acquisition of Chilean container line CCNI and its move into the east-west trade lanes.

Mega-ships have a detrimental impact on supply chains by reducing capacity for just-in-time production and forcing factories to increase safety stocks, according to the transport procurement head of a major global shipper.

The Ocean Alliance was born in Shanghai on Wednesday as CMA CGM, China Cosco Shipping, Evergreen Line and OOCL signed a memorandum of understanding to offer more than 40 global services connecting markets in Asia, Europe and the United States.

Hong Kong has become the latest jurisdiction to set a tolerance level between the verified gross mass of a container declared by a shipper and its actual weight under the new IMO container weighing rule, which comes into effect on July 1.

CMA CGM, China Cosco Shipping, Evergreen Line and OOCL on Wednesday morning are expected to announce in Shanghai that they will form a shipping alliance, a move aimed at blunting the power of the major vessel-sharing agreement between the two largest global container lines, Maersk Line and Mediterranean Shipping Co.

Container lines can reserve transits for vessels of up to 14,000 twenty-foot-equivalent units through the Panama Canal, providing carriers with the ability to gain greater economies of scale, which may or may not be passed onto shippers.

Spot market rates in the eastbound trans-Pacific edged lower for the second straight week, demonstrating that general rate increases taken by some carriers on April 1 are eroding.

Container lines will continue to aggressively target the depressed breakbulk and project cargo market with “close to zero” freight rates for the foreseeable future, according to Drewry Shipping Consultants.

U.S. federal safety officials on Monday began a second effort to locate the data recorder of the sunken El Faro in an effort to solve the mystery of the deadliest U.S.-flag vessel accident in more than 30 years.

In the aftermath of the West Coast labor debacle — and all the cross-border diversions, air cargo routing and alternative sourcing remedies that came with it — ocean carrier results for 2015 were mixed, with 19 of the JOC Top 40 ship lines moving goods in the U.S. trades posting volume declines. Separately, 21 of the JOC Top 40 U.S. export container carriers and 15 of the JOC Top 40 U.S. import container carriers posted declines in volume.

Carriers on the Asia to Europe and Mediterranean trades are lining up to levy highly optimistic May 1 general rate increases that, if successful, will double the spot rate on the struggling routes where prices each slid by 7 percent this week.

U.S. lawmakers Thursday showed little interest in getting directly involved with the controversy surrounding the SOLAS container weight rule.

Captain Timothy A. Brown, president of the International Organization of Masters, Mates & Pilots for 21 years before retiring at the end of 2012, died Sunday at the age of 73.

Brazil’s only surviving container line, Log-In Logistica, may be in deep debt, but that didn’t stop it from registering a 21.1 percent increase in Mercosur coastal and Brazilian cabotage movement during 2015.

The fleet of idled container ships is edging higher with more than 200 unemployed vessels above 3,000 20-foot-equivalent units, according to Alphaliner.