Container lines

With reefer volumes surging, the world's third-largest carrier says it bought new refrigerated containers as part of a larger effort to handle 1 million reefer TEUs annually by 2015

The CKYHE Alliance said today it would expand its coverage once again — this time opening up the scope of the alliance's trade loops to the United States.

The largest group of carriers in the trans-Pacific trade lane today unveiled a revised low-sulfur surcharge meant to tackle the costs associated with switching to the fuel in emissions control areas in North America on Jan. 1.

A sharp drop in spot rates from Asia to the Mediterranean was facilitated by slowing cargo volumes and overcapacity, Drewry Maritime Research says.

Members of the Transpacific Stabilization Agreement have filed for their 11th general rate increase this year in a continuing effort by carriers to shore up spot rates from Asia to North America.

The HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co. estimates it can complete a Nicaragua canal in five years at a cost of $40 billion, but more realistically, it will cost at least twice that amount and take 10 or more years to build the 173-mile-long waterway.

The slump in crude oil prices over the past three months has sharply reduced ocean carriers’ unit costs as they face declining cargo volumes in the seasonally slack fourth quarter.

Growing U.S.-Mexico trade has attracted a new player into the sparse short-sea market connecting the two countries, with a service aimed at the U.S. Southeast market for northbound cargo.

U.S. imports of ocean containers reached a record high in September, as retailers expect a robust holiday season, but exports continued to decline from soft global demand, making 2014 so far the worst year for container exports in the past four years.

An environmental accident was averted Friday after a Canadian tugboat rescued a stranded Russian container vessel hauling hundreds of tons of fuel, according to the Canadian Press.

Trans-Pacific carriers received a small boost from a planned Oct. 15 rate increase this week, the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index shows.

Spot freight rates on the Far East-North Europe route have sunk to $705 per 20-foot container, down $33 on the previous week to a new low for the year.

The Far East-U.S. East Coast container trade is shaping up as the potential “battlefield” of the future as an enlarged Panama Canal allows carriers to cascade larger ships from the Far East-Europe trade, according to Bimco.

The shift of freight from air to ocean is just a blip for container lines but has hit the air cargo industry hard, with few signs of relenting, a maritime consultant said Thursday.

Cross-border trade between Southeast Asia neighbors Thailand and Myanmar in 2014 is expected to grow 10 percent year-over-year to more than $6 billion.

Drewry’s benchmark spot rate from Hong Kong to Los Angeles rose as a result of a mid-October trans-Pacific general rate increase this week, though analysts with Drewry Maritime Research believe the eastbound spot rate will remain stable in the coming weeks.

The east-west ocean container trades will experience volatile spot freight rates through the end of 2015, according to Drewry Shipping Consultants.

It’s taking longer for containers to move through U.S., European and Asian ports served by ever-larger container ships, according to data from INTTRA, the world’s largest multicarrier e-commerce network.

Some container lines are better than others at dealing with port congestion irrespective of whether they have stakes in marine container terminals, Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen said, referring to recent woes at the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex.

A record number of ship deliveries will combine with declining scrapping rates and mid-single-digit growth in volume to extend the gap between container ship supply and demand through 2015, according to a leading maritime research consultant.

Even as Hapag-Lloyd and CSAV reach the homestretch in merging, Rolf Habben Jansen, CEO of the German carrier, said Wednesday not to expect container line consolidation to speed up in the coming years.

The Panama Canal Pilots Union will not try to renegotiate its contract with the Panama Canal Authority this year as both parties are allowed under the existing contract.

Israel Corp. will shift its stake in Zim Integrated Shipping Services, along with several other companies, to a holdings company that will be listed on stock exchanges in New York and Tel Aviv, the company announced.

The idle container ship fleet has fallen to its lowest level since August 2011 with just 1.1 percent of vessels above 500 20-foot-equivalent units without work, according to Alphaliner.

Although most U.S. companies view China as one of their top-five markets globally, there has been a steady 30 percentage point shift over the past four years regarding how U.S. firms view their prospects in China’s market.

China’s exports and imports in September grew well above expectations on the back of a strong rebound in foreign trade, but not enough to dispel warnings from analysts that hard times lay ahead.

A strategic agreement between China Shipping Group and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China could help the company become more competitive in the container shipping market.

Protesters were unsuccessful in delaying the arrival of the Zim Alabama at the Port of Tampa Bay over the weekend, though demonstrations against the Israeli-owned carrier are beginning to spread to more U.S. ports.

Planned equipment upgrades at India’s Jawaharlal Nehru Port will impact some ship calls in the the Indamex Service, a vessel-sharing agreement between Hapag-Lloyd, CMA CGM, APL, NYK Line and OOCL that connects the Indian subcontinent and eastern Mediterranean with the U.S. East Coast.

Ocean carriers face an uphill struggle to achieve planned general rate increases in the Asia-North Europe trade in the coming weeks against a backdrop of plummeting spot rates, according to industry analysts.

To understand how deeply the Asia-Europe trade is holding carriers’ bottom lines hostage, one just needs to look at the numbers. Spot freight rates on the head-haul westbound trade out of Asia slumped to just $822 per 20-foot-equivalent container unit in late September, according to the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index, less than half the $1,765 rate at the beginning of the year.

Hapag-Lloyd is looking for a safe haven. Like many of its rivals, the German carrier is seeking that haven in the form of new or enlarged alliances. But it's taking the pursuit for stability even further, restructuring its ownership and bringing in a new CEO who will steer the carrier into new routes, new ships and a merger that will elevate the fourth-largest container line by capacity.

Efforts to convert the Nile River into a shipping lane for landlocked sub-Saharan African countries are meeting with hurdles two years after the concept was introduced.

The largest U.S. container ports are expected to see a final surge in imports, with shipments setting a monthly record in October, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker report by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates.

OOCL has unveiled low sulfur surcharges of up to $110 per 20-foot container for Europe-North America voyages to cover the extra cost of burning cleaner fuels in 2015.

Fears of a spot rate plunge on Asia-U.S. routes following China’s Golden Week holidays proved unfounded, suggesting carriers on the trade have managed to balance capacity against demand over the traditionally slow period.

Spot rates from Shanghai to Rotterdam on the World Container Index have dipped yet again, as prices on the lane dropped this week to the lowest in a year.

Shipowners operating in emission control areas are skirting the system with falsified fuel delivery slips and a variety of other tactics, Maersk Group says.

U.S. oil refiners want to eliminate the Jones Act’s U.S.-flag requirements for domestic shipping “for only one reason – so refiners can make even larger profits,” said Tom Allegretti, president of the American Waterway Operators