Container lines

A federal hearing into the loss of the U.S.-flag vessel El Faro and its crew of 33 opened today with investigators quickly focusing on the age of the vessel and why TOTE Maritime, the ship’s operator, maintained a 40-year-old vessel in service.

Greek container shipowner Danaos swung to a net profit of $6.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2015 from a year-earlier loss of $51.4 million on reduced vessel impairments and lower financing costs.

CMA CGM and Cosco are leading efforts to create a new vessel-sharing alliance that could include Evergreen Line and OOCL and would shake up three of the four major east-west carrier groupings, the Alphaliner newsletter reported.

Container ship owners and carriers face a difficult year characterized by oversupply of vessels and uncertain global demand, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Service said in a report that warned of possible debt downgrades.

Russia plans to later this month ask the International Maritime Organization to delay the container weight mandate by one year to July 1, 2017, even as it continues to prepare for the global rule. Any country that is a signatory to the Safety of Life at Sea convention, under which the verified gross mass mandate draws authority, may delay implementation as long as they formally request an extension from the IMO before the July 1 implementation.

Plunging freight rates amid sluggish demand and excess capacity in the Indian coastal shipping market caused a sharp fall in net earnings in the third fiscal quarter at Shreyas Shipping and Logistics, according to a company filing with the Bombay Stock Exchange.

A formal United States Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation into the sinking of the U.S.-flag vessel El Faro and the loss of 33 lives last October will begin Tuesday, seeking a cause for the deadliest American merchant marine disaster since the sinking of the Marine Electric in 1983.

Depressingly weak trade data greeted China as the country slowly gets back to business after the lunar New Year holidays.

Spot rates in the eastbound Pacific were flat this week as vessels left Asia filled with consumer merchandise before factories there closed for the annual Chinese New Year celebrations.

The United States and any other country that is party to SOLAS can delay implementation of the International Maritime Organization’s controversial container weight rule by up to a year, a fact bound to increase pressure on the U.S. Coast Guard to extend the deadline past July 1 to avoid potential trade disruption.

Fitch Ratings is warning that the new International Maritime Organization’s Safety of Life at Sea container weight mandate is poised to slow cargo throughput at U.S. ports as carriers, shippers and terminal operators grapple with rule set to take effect July. 1.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board plans a second expedition to search for the voyage data recorder and other evidence from the TOTE Maritime cargo ship El Faro, which sank Oct. 1 with the loss of its 33-member crew.

Shipping Corporation of India almost doubled its third-fiscal quarter net profit as cost savings, driven by lower bunker fuel prices and a change in depreciation provision, more than offset sluggish global trade and a marginal decline in operating revenue.

The Port of Felixstowe will offer a container weighing service to ensure UK shippers are able to comply with the new SOLAS container weight regulation that will be enforced from July 1, and to avoid potential export disruption.

In an indication of the range of issues that remain to be resolved in the U.S. before the SOLAS container weight rule takes effect in July, a public meeting of U.S. federal agencies, carriers, terminals and shippers (and media) will meet later this month in Washington under the auspices of the Federal Maritime Commission.

Maritime NZ, New Zealand’s maritime authority, is seeking stakeholder comments until March 11 on draft guidelines for compliance with the International Maritime Organization’s Safety of Life at Sea verified gross mass amendment.

Maersk Line, Mediterranean Shipping Co. and more than a dozen other carriers will revise their pricing practices to avoid fines and end an EU antitrust suit and investigation.

Container shipping demand and capacity are matching up better after the latter greatly outpaced the former in the last three months of 2015, but it’s too soon to tell if the improvement will hold, said Nils Smedegaard Andersen, CEO of Maersk Group.

Maersk Group’s 2015 profit tumbled 82 percent to $925 million as record low freight rates and a write down in the value of its oil assets savaged the Danish shipping giant’s annual earnings.

Hapag-Lloyd says there was a 65 percent increase in improperly declared hazardous cargo it carried last year, the latest sign of how dangerous goods could disrupt supply chains through accidents such as those that took place recently in China and Brazil.

The Agriculture Transportation Coalition said a new international container weight verification rule threatens U.S. exporters with lost business and supply chain “turmoil,” and warrants a congressional inquiry.

Containerized imports at U.S. ports are projected to increase by double digits in January and February compared to the same months last year, when dozens of vessels were stranded outside of West Coast ports due to labor problems.

A dozen tugboats pulled a mega-ship out of the mud of the Elbe River so that it could call at the Port of Hamburg, illustrating the pressure such gargantuan ships place on ports and rescue crews.

Container lines, at least in the U.S., are starting to take forceful action to prepare for the Safety of Life at Sea, or SOLAS, weight verification rule.

Dole’s deployment of the Dole Pacific on regular service between California and Latin America is the latest sign of how refrigerated ship operators are turning increasingly to container ships from traditional break bulk vessels.

WASHINGTON — The enforcement of the SOLAS container weight mandate for U.S. exports — if there is any — will be done by the U.S. Coast Guard's Captain of the Port of each gateway, and the agency will also check for boxes without verified gross mass documentation when it boards inbound vessels.

Nigeria’s navy has secured the release of the Safmarine Kuramo from pirates that hijacked the vessel Friday as it made its way from Pointe Noire, Congo to Onne, Nigeria.

The Panama Canal Authority is shooting to open its third set of larger locks that can handle post-Panamax ships in May, but it doesn’t expect the larger locks to attract new services for several months.

Freight rates in the trans-Pacific edged lower this week as the final shipments left Asia before factories there shut down for two weeks for the Chinese New Year celebrations. Even larger declines in freight rates could take place in the coming weeks.

Japan’s government has drawn up the drafts of guidelines and revised ministry ordinances, which contain penalties and variation between the verified gross mass and actual weight of a container, for the smooth implementation of the International Maritime Organization's looming Safety of Life at Sea, or SOLAS, container weight rules.

The fleet of idled container ships declined in the past two weeks with 11 vessels securing work, but is set to increase later this month as carriers blank services on the Asia-north Europe trade, according to Alphaliner.

Steadily falling spot rates on the Asia to Europe and Mediterranean trades slowed to single digit declines this week with the majority of factories now closed for the Chinese New Year holiday period.

Saying it will be impossible to implement the SOLAS container weight rule by July 1 without severely disrupting trade, U.S. exporters are calling on the Coast Guard to delay the rule until it can be amended and determined that they won’t face a competitive disadvantage against foreign exporters.

China Shipping Container Lines’ mega-ship Indian Ocean has run aground in the Elbe river roughly 19 miles from the Port of Hamburg, according to the German newspaper Die Welt.

Although overall export revenues for Brazilian shoes fell 10 percent last year, to $960.4 million, sales during the last month of December ended on a high and rocketed 60 percent from November, to $119.57 million, raising the sector’s expectations for this year, according to Heitor Klein, the chief executive of Abicalçados, the Brazilian Association of Footwear Manufacturers.

The SOLAS requirement that all packed containers must have a verified gross mass (VGM) before being loaded from July 1 sounds reasonable and straight forward, but parties within the export supply chain of a container are finding that compliance will depend on a sharp revamp of their internal processes.

E-commerce ocean freight booking service Inttra, container lines and forwarders are working to create processes for a new type of form that will allow shippers to electronically send the verified gross mass of their container shipments to carriers in an attempt to eliminate a potentially huge bottleneck to trade once a new global container weight requirement takes effect in July.

Zim Integrated Shipping Services unveiled plans to overhaul its organizational structure to maximize profits on the Israeli ocean carrier’s core liner routes.

Hanjin Shipping edged into the black in 2015 with its $6 million net profit representing a half-a-billion dollar turnaround from the huge 2014 loss as the carrier managed to offset declining revenue with lower costs and the rationalization of service lanes.

In an increasingly uncertain container shipping market, price volatility is one of the few entirely predictable things left, was Drewry’s wry assessment of the wildly fluctuating freight rates on East-West trades.