Container lines

The automotive trade is waiting with bated breath for any tariffs coming out of the US Commerce Department’s investigation into the potential national security implications of imports of vehicles and parts.

A proposal to impose mandatory speed limits on ocean vessels faces an uncertain future after being tabled at last week’s meeting of the IMO’s Marine Environmental Protection Committee.

Port proponents worry newly threatened tariffs from the Trump administration on ship-to-shore cranes and containers will dampen investment and productivity, as the recent escalation of tariffs pushes up chassis production costs.

Shallow Panama Canal draft limits have already pushed up spot rates from Asia to the East Coast, with the cost of moving an FEU up 14 percent year over year.

In the latest step in the ocean carrier’s transformation into a “global integrator” of container logistics, Maersk Line has folded in the inland services formerly operated by APM Terminals.

Digital Container Shipping Association officials say improving standards around cargo visibility is a top priority of the new carrier coalition.

Container carriers skipped sailings on two loops and slowed service on another between Asia and the east coast of South America, but the resulting bump in spot rates was short lived.

Before May 5, when President Donald Trump announced that tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese imports would rise from 10 percent to 25 percent, carriers were relatively sanguine about 2019 and for good reasons.

Higher volumes for HMM and Yang Ming drove better operating results, but both are still struggling to attain profitability.

The European Commission’s competition regulator warned that shipper suggestions that carriers create a uniform bunker adjustment factor (BAF) surcharge would be viewed as a “hardcore violation” of antitrust rules.

Adding five new members may give the Digital Container Shipping Association the quorum needed to press forward with the development of standard data protocols.

The conclusion of annual trans-Pacific service contracts this month showed that container lines for the most part got shippers to agree to reimburse them for expected higher fuel costs as of Jan. 1.

There are savings to be made from slowing ships even further, although with vessels already slowing down there will be diminishing returns.

Draft restrictions resulting from low water levels in the Panama Canal are driving up spot ocean freight rates between Asia and the US East Coast in the short term, but the long-term outlook is unclear due to further threatened tariffs on US imports from China.

While CMA CGM is the first carrier to implement the emergency bunker fuel surcharges this quarter, other carriers are likely to follow

Most beneficial cargo owners (BCOs) and NVOs are agreeing to pay higher base rates this year in the hope that container carriers will be less inclined to hit them with premiums of as much as $1,000 per container, as occurred during the peak autumn months last year.

The economic and trade forecasts for 2019 are mixed, but in volume terms the year is off to a good start, as evidenced by a strong first quarter for Hapag-Lloyd.

European imports from Asia have yet to show any ill effects from a slowdown in economic activity in major economies in the European Union.

Coastal transshipment at Indian ports has grown considerably since the relaxation of cabotage rules, but detractors argue that privately operated minor ports have reaped more of the benefits than their publicly run counterparts.

The Panama Canal Authority (ACP) announced the sixth reduction in its maximum draft this year for the Neopanamax locks on Gatun Lake as water levels continue to fall.

Container carriers will have to remove nearly every vessel from service for at least a week to transition to low-sulfur fuel as mandated by the IMO, but BCOs hope that carriers don't use this as a way to manipulate capacity during the peak season.

Container carriers are rejecting proposed mandatory vessel speed limits, saying the move set to be discussed at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) meeting later this month would undermine climate change goals for shipping.

The container carrier’s latest efforts to provide integrated, end-to-end logistics services is helping it to make inroads in the Indian cold chain market.

Pressure is mounting on shipping lines to cut emissions via mandatory average speed limits on vessels, but data suggests carriers have been slow-steaming ships in the east-west trades for years.

Already facing a low-sulfur fuel mandate in 2020, the shipping industry is just beginning to gauge how to decarbonize, with slower-steaming already being proposed.

Container carrier schedule reliability in the eastbound trans-Pacific has bounced back from record lows in early 2019 but still lags global on-time performance by quite a bit.

A rapidly approaching deadline for the implementation of early greenhouse gas emissions reduction measures has given way to the belief that only operational steps can do the trick with low- or zero-carbon propulsion methods still several years away.

BCOs concerned about variations among carrier low-sulfur fuel surcharges may be able to shift volumes to exploit volatility in bunker pricing.

Chinese state-owned Cosco Shipping is one of several Asian and European ocean carriers that are increasingly focused on providing customers with deeper logistics services that go beyond conventional ocean shipping strategies.

Low water surcharges on the inland waterways from service providers work on a steeply increasing scale.

The merged container operations of Japan's three largest ocean carriers got off to a dismal start as it launched operations in April 2018, which helped drag down revenue.

Container carriers are caught in a classic “prisoner’s dilemma.” If they all install scrubbers, none of them reap the benefits of cheap, plentiful high-sulfur fuel that would come from widespread adoption of low-sulfur fuel.

The US Maritime Administration has awarded $6.79 million in federal marine highway grants to container-on-barge projects in Louisiana and Virginia and a waterborne service that will move farm products between Long Island and Connecticut.

HMM’s new CEO is on a European tour that will focus on three key challenges: the future of its 2M Alliance relationship, winning customer trust, and gaining insight into the low-sulfur fuel mandate.

Container vessel on-time performance could degrade even further as carriers remove ships from service to install equipment that “scrubs” harmful sulfur particles from ship exhaust in lieu of burning low-sulfur fuel.

The World Trade Organization has downgraded its 2019 outlook for world trade growth to 2.6 percent from a 3 percent clip in 2018, and global manufacturing is weakening.

Maersk’s commitment to a fully decarbonized fleet by 2050 is ensuring that decarbonization will immediately come onto the container shipping industry’s agenda.

Four of the world’s largest shipping lines received clearance this week to begin developing data standards through a new association designed to help carriers to tap more quickly into outside digital innovation.

Container carriers have reportedly wrapped up annual contract negotiations with some of the largest US importers and are now turning their full attention to NVOs and smaller BCOs.

With draft restrictions already imposed in the waterway’s larger locks due to lack of rain, the Panama Canal Authority is working on plans for a third water reservoir that would help replenish the locks system during dry weather.