Container lines

Hyundai Merchant Marine has once again rejected speculation of a merger with fellow South Korean carrier Hanjin Shipping and clarified the role of a financial adviser serving the ailing ocean carrier.

Maersk Line expects container volumes in the eastbound trans-Pacific to increase between 5 and 5.5 percent this year but sees little or no growth in westbound volumes.

A working group made up of major non-vessel-operating common carriers is urging the International Maritime Organization to issue status updates of how the 162 contracting states to the SOLAS convention will implement the container weight mandate.

Conflicting and constantly changing information on new container weight regulations requiring shippers to provide the verified gross mass of all export containers points to a chaotic rollout of the rule when enforcement begins on July 1.

Financially struggling container ship lines face another money-losing year and need more consolidation in order to regain profitability, consulting firm AlixPartners says in a new report.

Several of the world’s top container lines are entering a game of musical chairs. When the music stops, some of them will find themselves in different vessel-sharing alliances because of the chain reaction touched off by the current wave of mergers and acquisitions among carriers.

Trans-Pacific shippers, still sore from U.S. West Coast port congestion, frustrated with schedule reliability and seeing no end to overcapacity draining spot rates, might be tempted to put the squeeze on carriers during annual contract negotiations. They should resist.

A U.S. Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation into the sinking of the U.S.-flag ship El Faro recessed Friday after witnesses painted a picture of a captain, a company and a system that in sum badly misjudged the threat of Hurricane Joaquin and greatly over-estimated the old ship’s seaworthiness.

U.S. exporters are being told to resist some guidance from carriers on how to meet the SOLAS container weight mandate, with the Agriculture Transportation Coalition saying the notifications from liners are “contradictory” to the Coast Guard’s hands-off stance on the rule.

Spot rates in the eastbound Pacific continued their descent this week, declining 4 percent week-to-week to the East Coast and 6 percent to the West Coast as shipments from Asia were down because of the annual Chinese New Year celebrations.

Start thinking differently, potentially a lot differently, about how to comply with the new container weight rule that enters force July 1.

Drewry is introducing a new procurement service for container shippers that conducts ocean shipping contract negotiations based on benchmark contract freight rates for all global trade lanes it obtains from a group of beneficial cargo owners.

A look at the 2015 performance of three major carriers — Maersk Line, OOCL and APL — reveals the extent of the decline in average revenue per 20-foot container transported that low bunker prices were unable to offset.

The location “pinger” on the crucial black box "voyage data recorder" carried on board the lost ship El Faro contained batteries that probably had expired, an official of the black box manufacturer testified today.

Hanjin Shipping is seeking to offload a variety of assets to remain solvent ahead of the maturation of $406 million in debt in the first half, according to a report from Yonhap News, a South Korean newswire.

As the U.S. Coast Guard was phoning TOTE Services, Inc. to affirm that El Faro was troubled but not in distress, the ship’s emergency beacon sounded an alarm in the background alerting Coast Guard search and rescue that the ship was now in distress.

Frank Peake, the former president of Sea Star Line, will ask the Supreme Court to overturn his antitrust conspiracy conviction and five-year sentence for price-fixing in the Jones Act domestic trade between the U.S. mainland and Puerto Rico.

World forwarding body FIATA added its weighty voice to the growing discussion over container weight verification, calling for container lines to better communicate how they expect to receive the verified gross mass data.

Hapag-Lloyd swung into profit in 2015 as cargo volume and revenue soared in the first year of its merger with the container arm of Chile’s CSAV.

El Faro was scheduled for a Coast Guard inspection and was on a special “target list” for ships with the most potential for risk when the vessel sank with its crew of 33.

Neptune Orient Lines posted a $707 million net profit for 2015 as the sale of its logistics unit lifted annual earnings by $888 million, but collapsing freight rates in the fourth quarter and falling volumes hit the liner business hard.

The newly formed China Cosco Shipping Corp. aims to become the third-largest global container line by boosting its fleet by at least 50,000 twenty-foot-equivalent units to more than 2 million TEUs by the end of 2018.

Attorneys for TOTE Services and TOTE Maritime have mounted a strong and effective defense of the company but produced “optics” that are so negative for the company that broad public opinion could begin to affect national shipping policy.

Neither the captain of the ill-fated American flag ship El Faro nor the company shore representative seemed to believe the ship was in danger of sinking when the captain first made contact, according to testimony and recordings played during the fifth day of a U.S. Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation into the sinking of the ship and the loss of all 33 crew.

The CMA CGM Benjamin Franklin on Friday was christened in Long Beach, and with the largest container ship to call in the U.S., with a capacity of 18,000 20-foot container units, the carrier was sending a message to ports on both coasts.

The steamship El Faro’s boilers contained elements that were “severely deteriorated” when it began its final fatal voyage, but the operators of the vessel said the problems did not comprise “any show stoppers.”

Hapag-Lloyd warned shippers Friday that it will not load their containers if they are not accompanied by a verified gross mass under the international container weight mandate that comes into effect in July.

Korea Investors Service, a credit rating agency in South Korea, has placed Hanjin Shipping on a watchlist for a potential downgrade as it struggles to cope with a down market across its business segments, particularly containers and dry bulk.

Hapag-Lloyd has started to pilot a collaborative, cloud-based stowage planning system that makes stowage plans and cargo data available to vessels in port and to terminal operators.

Spot rates on the trans-Pacific tumbled this week as the pre-Chinese New Year demand that ramped up January container volumes in Southern California gateways dropped off and the slow season set in.

The slack season kicked in hard this week with spot rates on the Asia-Europe and Mediterranean trades, already at their lowest so far this year, dropping more than 20 percent, according to the latest reading of the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index.

The U.S. Coast Guard Thursday said it will not consider delaying the International Maritime Organization’s controversial new container weight rule and the agency cannot, and will not, hold shippers responsible for not providing container weight documentation to carriers.

There’s little chance that Canada will ask the International Maritime Organization to delay the SOLAS container weight mandate or even give shippers a “soft start” when the rule takes effect July 1, said Bob Ballantyne, president of the Freight Management Association of Canada.

The captain of the ill-fated U.S.-flag ship El Faro thought he had put Hurricane Joaquin behind him based on inaccurate weather forecasts and had few options when informed that new forecasts placed the storm directly in front of him, a representative of the captain’s widow told a U.S. Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation today.

Mediterranean Shipping Co. rebranded its ISES service between India and Europe as “Himalaya Express” and replaced a call at Salalah, Oman with one at King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia, effective this month.

U.S. Coast Guard investigators aggressively bore down for a second day on the corporate operators of the lost ship El Faro, questioning whether the company had direct oversight of its ship captains and whether it had a plan in place to intervene if a captain filed a hazardous navigation plan.

The fleet of idled container ships above 500 TEUs is continuing to decline with 20 vessels finding work in the past two weeks, according to Alphaliner.

The depth of Hyundai Merchant Marine’s financial troubles was revealed in a letter from its CEO to owners of the South Korean line’s chartered-in fleet pleading for discounts, saying the carrier was near collapse.

As the industry prepares for the controversial new verified weight rules that go into effect this July, the Port of Charleston is the first U.S. port to say it is willing and game to provide in-terminal weighing services for containers if allowed to do so by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Brazil seems to have most things in place for the new Safety of Life at Sea, or SOLAS, container weight mandate of the International Maritime Organization, according to several terminal managers and trade and maritime commentators in the South American country.