Container lines

Asia forwarders are preparing for a busy first quarter with a six-week sweet spot between the western year end and a late Chinese New Year expected to drive up cargo volumes being shipped out before the mainland's most important holiday.

An international arbitration panel ruled that the engineering consortium that is building the Panama Canal’s third set of locks has the right to seek payments from the Panama Canal Authority agency for $233 million of the $463 million in cost overruns it's claiming for cement and aggregate.

The new toll structure on container ships proposed by the Panama Canal Authority could produce significant reductions in toll costs for carriers deploying the larger post-Panamax ships that will be able to pass through the expanded locks.

Trans-Pacific spot rates slipped 2.9 percent from last week but are expected to rise following a $1,000-per-container increase that carriers have announced for mid-January, Drewry Maritime Research said.

Beneficial cargo owners are watching how the alliances will impact their supply chains between Asia and Europe and North America.

Jones Act container line TOTE has contracted with two companies to supply liquefied natural gas for the two LNG-powered ships the company is building for the Puerto Rico trade.

Maersk Line is reorganizing the port rotation of its Mawingu Express, a weekly direct service from India to East Africa, effective in early February.

Ocean shippers moving goods on the eight largest global trade lanes have increasingly fewer service options, as the average number of sailings last year declined 7.4 percent from 2012.

With MOL’s container business in the red and performing worse than the other Japanese carriers, the company’s president in New Year’s message said 2015 would be a “counteroffensive year” in which it would get more aggressive in cost-cutting.

The growing cost of production in China is forcing some European companies to take their outsourced manufacturing back home after years spent in the region as the profit margins that lured them to Asia are steadily eroded.

U.S. economic growth and disruptions on the West Coast are combining to make 2015 a promising year for U.S. East and Gulf Coast ports.

NYK joined "K" Line and CSAV in pleading guilty to U.S. price-fixing charges over the past year related to roll-on, roll-off shipping services.

Short sea container lines and feeder operators in northern Europe are bracing for bankruptcies, shotgun sales and shuttered services in the coming months following the introduction of tough ship emission regulations that will significantly increase fuel costs on some of the world’s busiest shipping routes.

China’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slipped to its lowest reading in 18 months, confirming a slowdown in the mainland’s economic growth and following close behind an HSBC PMI that registered a similar decline.

Spot rates on the trans-Pacific have dropped nearly 20 percent in the two weeks following a historically high general rate increase, new data from Drewry Maritime Research shows.

Ocean carriers face an uphill struggle to push through planned general rate increases on the Far East-north Europe trade in January amid deteriorating economic conditions at both ends of the world’s biggest liner route.

Western ocean carriers, port operators and freight forwarders are bracing for a slump in Russia’s freight traffic as the nation heads for recession and double-digit inflation in 2015.

The year 2015 has not yet begun but is already promising to be one fraught with complexity and unpredictability for beneficial cargo owners in the eastbound trans-Pacific.

The global container ship fleet could expand by as much as 7.6 percent in 2015 driven by deliveries of extra large vessels and a slump in scrapping of older ships, according to Alphaliner.

The Central American canal projects continue to generate questions over funding — where it will come from in the case of the proposed Nicaraguan plan, and where it is going in the Panama Canal upgrade.

CMA CGM on Friday released extensive details of the Ocean Three east-west alliance that it will begin early in 2015 along with United Arab Shipping Co. and China Shipping Container Line.

After a year of surging sales of foodstuffs to Russia owing to economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and European Union and retaliatory actions by Russia, Brazil is now possibly the largest supplier of food to Russia, according to the SovEcon consultancy.

The banana industry in Davao Region of the Philippines is expected to fully recover during the first or second quarter of 2015, an industry leader this week.

Charging that Brazil’s foreign trade is too concentrated in the Mercosur trading bloc, the Brazilian Foreign Trade Association wants Brazil to weaken its ties with Mercosur and concentrate instead on other foreign markets.

Wilhelmshaven hailed its success in landing a third 2M service as a sign of ocean carriers’ growing interest in Germany’s only deep water port that is virtually empty more than two years after opening.

A China Shipping Container Lines (CSCL) executive has shrugged off demand forecasts predicting 3 to 5 percent market growth in the next few years that will not be enough to fill the capacity flooding into service.

Concluding the final stage in its merger with Hapag-Lloyd, CSAV injected 259 million euros ($317 million) into the combined company and in doing so increased its shareholding to 34 percent in what is now the world’s fourth largest container line.

A look back at the year’s host of general rate increases levied by shipping lines on their customers reveals the ineffectiveness of the practice, with no GRI sticking for longer than two weeks or achieving the sought after price hike.

The limited exemption for exports, and possibly the 53-year-old embargo, may become a thing of the past if Obama gets his way. But ending the embargo would require congressional action, something that’s politically questionable.

Although carrier reliability globally in November was the best so far this year, carriers operating on the trans-Pacific eastbound lane saw reliability worsen, as timeliness sank to 53.6 percent for the month, new data from SeaIntel shows.

Holiday shoppers in Asia will have to deal with a little less Christmas cheer this year, as trans-Pacific shipments of Christmas trees from the U.S. Pacific Northwest are the latest casualty of West Coast port congestion.

Spot rates in the eastbound trans-Pacific responded to carrier rate increase attempts by jumping about 40 percent this week, Drewry Maritime Research said.

World Shipping Council President and CEO Chris Koch in late July will hand over the reins of the trade group representing major container lines.

The launch of the 2M and 03 alliances in the New Year will boost capacity on the Far East-Mediterranean route by about 19 percent, triggering a battle for market share that could result in fresh rate reductions, according to Alphaliner.

Maersk Line is merging its MECL1 and MECL2 services connecting the Middle East, India and the U.S. East Coast into a single weekly loop, beginning in mid-January 2015.

Hapag-Lloyd became the latest carrier to announce a large general rate increase on trans-Pacific eastbound cargo for January, following Maersk Line and MOL.

U.S. containerized exports to most Latin American markets will contract this year, while imports, reflecting the strengthening U.S. economy, will be up.

Maersk Line plans to launch a direct weekly service from India to Africa in late January 2015 in a move to reduce transit times on that trade lane.

The 25 largest container lines had estimated net losses totaling $2.6 billion in 2009-2013 and had an operating margin of 1.6 percent during that span, Dutch consulting and research firm Dynamar said in a report.

Mediterranean Shipping Co. is already the largest carrier of U.S. containerized exports and the largest overall carrier in the U.S. market. Now it’s about to add the title of largest carrier in the import market, solidifying its dominance of the U.S. market.