Container lines

Heavy investment in India by global car companies in the hope that the fast-growing market would soon rival China are faltering as car sales fall and the depreciating rupee pushes up costs, but the big brand carmakers such as Volkswagen, Ford and Renault-Nissan are now looking outwards.

“K” Line has pled guilty to U.S. price fixing charges in the roll-on, roll-off market and will pay a $67.7 million criminal fine and take an extraordinary loss of roughly the same amount in its fiscal second quarter

United Arab Shipping Co. expects that as mega-alliances increasingly consolidate the container shipping market, freight rates will stabilize, which could be bad news for shippers.

Japan’s ClassNK plans to share findings of its investigation of last year’s sinking of the container ship MOL Comfort, which an official of rival classification society DNV GL criticized as having a “non-robust design.”

Even though the $5.3 billion Panama Canal expansion has yet to be completed, Panama Canal Authority Administrator Jorge Quijano already envisions another expansion within 25 years to handle even larger container ships.

Emirates Shipping Line has expanded its Gulf-Indian subcontinent-Africa (GIA) service by adding a direct call at the Port of Jawaharlal Nehru (Nhava Sheva), India’s largest container gateway.

South American ports are struggling to keep up with explosive growth in demand. The average size of ships calling on the east coast of South America has increased 140 percent since 2006, according to Drewry Maritime Research.

Finnish short-sea operator Containerships has ordered two more ships that will run on LNG or conventional marine fuels in the Baltic and North seas.

Concerns about Ebola transfer in western Africa continue to have the region’s shipping industry on edge with reports of possible boycotts ahead.

Surcharge-weary container line customers are preparing for a new and largely unspecified bunker levy from January as carriers start tallying the costs of a mandatory switch to low sulphur fuel in Europe and North America.

As “K” Line’s container shipping business hovers at break-even, the company says it will focus on growing other shipping segments while cost-cutting to keep its container business viable.

Maersk Line plans to invest $3 billion a year for up to five years to order ships with a combined capacity of 425,000 20-foot-equivalent units for delivery between 2017 and 2019, enabling the world’s largest carrier to grow with the market.

Maersk Line’s revived SeaLand brand will be ready to launch early next year to capture intra-Americas business and grow its market share on the north-south routes, CEO Soren Skou in Copenhagen today.

Expansion of the Panama Canal will cause operators of pure car and truck carriers mimic container lines by building larger ships and cascading smaller ones to secondary markets, says consulting group Maritime Strategies International.

Maersk Line and Mediterranean Shipping Co. have completed the self-assessment of their proposed “2M” vessel-sharing agreement for European regulators, ensuring compliance with European Union law.

Maersk Line clarified a recent comment by CEO Soren Skou in which he appeared to say that his company would not relinquish its longtime No. 1 ranking after Alphaliner said it would be overtaken by Mediterranean Shipping Co. in 2016.

The U.S. Commerce Department set duties on 53-foot dry intermodal containers from China after a preliminary determination concluded manufacturers received unfair subsidies from the Chinese government

Global container port traffic will top 840 million 20-foot-equivalent units by 2018, with Africa and greater China posting the fastest growth rates, according to shipping consultancy Drewry.

CMA CGM, China Shipping Container Lines, OOCL and PIL plan to launch a new joint service connecting Northeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand in early November.

The 2M and O3 alliances likely will first lock horns in the Asia-Mediterranean trade, with planned increases in capacity threatening to unleash a rate war, according to analyst Alphaliner.

New export orders saw China factory output increasing in September as the mainland manufacturing sector continued to expand, reaching a two-month high and raising expectations that inventory building could see export growth into the fourth quarter.

TOTE Shipholdings and Saltchuk Resources have secured a $324.6 million Maritime Administration loan guarantee for construction of two container ships that will be fueled by liquefied natural gas.

The European Shippers Council attacked the proposed 2M vessel-sharing agreement in a letter sent last week to the Federal Maritime Commission but is unlikely to convince the U.S. regulatory agency to reject the agreement involving the world’s two largest container lines.

U.S. containerized trade increased 2.6 percent year-over-year in the first half of 2014, with just three carriers — Maersk Line, Mediterranean Shipping Co. and Evergreen Line — accounting for 28.4 percent of all trade.

The savings to be gained from a container line getting more miles to the gallon are immense, as Singapore's NOL Group can attest with $1.2 billion in cuts, and half of that came from bunker and network savings at its APL liner division.

Spot freight rates on the key Asia-north Europe trade are reported to have slumped to just $750 per 20-foot container, down more than $1,000 since the beginning of the year.

China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection is considering new regulations that would put provincial authorities in charge of approving wastepaper imports that the ministry now regulates.

The percent of import containers arriving at the Los Angeles-Long Beach gateway that were transloaded into domestic containers for onward rail transport into the interior U.S. continued to increase last year and is forecast to continue rising in 2014.

Westbound trans-Pacific carriers expect container availability to increase in the next three weeks at most key U.S. intermodal hubs, according to a weekly U.S. Department of Agriculture survey.

India and China signed 16 memorandums of understanding, including a five-year trade and economic cooperation plan, in a major attempt to address the growing trade imbalance between the two countries.

DFDS, one of Europe’s largest short sea-shipping and logistics operators, this week announced plans to close a second route in response to tougher environmental regulations that will sharply increase the cost of ships’ fuel from 2015.

Maersk Line CEO Soren Skou on Friday discussed the proposed “2M’ vessel-sharing agreement with China’s Ministry of Commerce, as the carrier works to avoid a repeat of the rejection that it received from Chinese regulators for its proposed P3 alliance in June.

Global Ship Lease has agreed to acquire an 8,063-TEU container ship from a “leading” though unnamed container line for $55 million, according to the container ship charter company.

With the number of laid-up container ships hovering close to three-year lows, vessel owners may enjoy a short-term boost in charter rates this fall, industry analyst firm Alphaliner reports in its latest newsletter.

Japan’s trade surplus with the United States shrank sharply in August, as exports to the U.S. declined while imports surged at a double-digit pace, according to preliminary trade figures released Thursday by Japan’s Finance Ministry.

The emergence of four large alliances among the world's largest container shipping lines is creating a two-tier market that could doom smaller carriers to hanging on to niche trades or going out of business.

Maersk Line and Mediterranean Shipping Co. today released the 2M Alliance’s tentative 2015 east-west network, including port rotations, arrivals and departures and transit times.

China Cosco Holdings will splash out $618 million on five 14,500-TEU vessels that will be built by CSSC’s Jiangnan Changxing Shipbuilding yard as the mainland’s largest carrier continues to upgrade its fleet in an attempt to arrest declining profitability.