Container Shipping News

Compliance with the new container weight verification rule that will be imposed on July 1 is beginning to crystallize around two key points for shippers: What is the carrier cut-off time for submission of the Verified Gross Mass, and will boxes without the VGM be stopped at the gate?

Spot freight rates from Shanghai to the West Coast hit a record low this week, dropping to $761 per 40-foot container.

CMA CGM on Friday announced its debut in the intra-Mediterranean trade with a dedicated direct service between nine southern Europe, North Africa and Middle East ports.

APM Terminals-operated Pipavav Port’s efforts to grow container volumes received a big push earlier this week when the INDFEX, or India-Far East Express, consortium introduced a regular weekly call at the minor facility on India’s west coast.

Forwarders are reporting a growing number of enquiries for zero freight rates on container shipments from Asia to North Europe, even as spot rates on the trade and on Asia-Mediterranean this week matched the lowest levels ever recorded.

CMA CGM is accelerating its expansion in West Africa, introducing a new fleet, extending coverage and upgrading an existing line, building on its extensive ocean service and inland transport corridors into the hinterland.

Shippers seeking to avoid supply chain disruption on July 1 when a new container weight rule takes effect need to be mindful of one key fact irrespective of what they may or may not be hearing from government enforcement agencies: No matter what country a ship is departing from, container carriers cannot load a container for which it has not received a verified gross mass declaration from the shipper.

The Korea Development Bank is giving Hyundai Merchant Marine some breathing room on its debts after other creditors of the container line rejected its offer to reschedule debt, edging the company closer to a potential bankruptcy.

Hanjin Shipping will replace its joint pendulum service connecting the U.S. West Coast to Asia and the Mediterranean with an exclusive Hanjin-supplied service as the carrier restructures its network in the face of surplus capacity and weak demand.

NileDutch, a specialized West Africa container line, has acquired the Europe to West Africa services and operations of independent Maersk Line subsidiary Safmarine.

The Obama Administration has made it easier for container services calling the United States to add Cuba as port of call, a small step in unleashing container trade between the two countries that has been stymied by a 56-year trade embargo.

Exports of Brazilian beef jumped by more than a quarter in February year-over-year, which bodes well for the country’s exporters who have already been forecasting a bumper year ahead because of the weak national currency and the lifting of export bans.

The global idle container ship fleet has soared to an all-time high, with rising numbers of larger ships unemployed, driven by a widening demand-supply gap,

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The U.S. Coast Guard shrugged off suggestions that the rollout of a controversial new container weight regulation is mired in confusion and concern at a congressional hearing Tuesday.

A group of 49 shippers associations and supply chain stakeholders is calling on the U.S. Coast Guard to leave unchanged the existing processes for finding and transmitting cargo weight information.

The Asia-Europe container trade faces volatile spot freight rates and sluggish traffic growth through 2016, according to Drewry Shipping Consultants.

South Korea’s shipping lines are adding services to Indochina in order to meet current demand and future growth as China’s economic expansion slows and other Northeast Asia economies reach maturation.

The trans-Atlantic built on its reputation as one of the few reliable trades in a troubled container shipping market in 2015, but it faces tough challenges this year that might tarnish its image.

Capt. Chester “Chet” I. Hopkins III, a longtime maritime executive whose posts included vice president of operations at CMA CGM, died Thursday at Maine Medical Center in Portland, Maine. He was 75.

Atlantic Container Line will maintain its twice-weekly service at the Port of Halifax with ACL’s new G4 container/roll-on, roll-off ships, under a new contract that runs through 2022.

Trans-Pacific spot rates this week followed the lead of the Asia-Europe trades and approached record lows, most likely signaling yet another year of overcapacity problems in the major east-west trade lanes.

Two people died after a helicopter of Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration crashed as it left a grounded T.S. Lines container ship after dropping off environmental inspectors Thursday, according to the Taipei Times, a local news organization.

Spot rates on the Asia-Europe and Asia-Mediterranean trades this week edged closer to the record lows set last year, according to the latest reading of the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index.

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Following lengthy consultation with various stakeholders, India has drawn up its first draft of guidelines for the July 1 implementation of new container weight rules set by the International Maritime Organization’s Safety of Life at Sea, or SOLAS, convention.

The fleet of idled container ships of more than 500 twenty-foot-equivalent units has hit a new six-year high with an increasing number of larger vessels out of work, and the unemployment rate is set to rise as container lines blank more sailings on the Asia-Europe trade.

European cargo terminal operators have once again said their national governments are not doing enough to clarify regulations requiring all containers to be weighed before they are loaded onto ships.

The poor relations between Turkey and Russia have the latter focusing on the active development of the Northern Sea Route through the melting Arctic during the next several years, according to recent statements of Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin.

The CKYHE Alliance is reorganizing its service network for Asia-Europe and Asia-Mediterranean trades as the carriers try to counter the weak demand and excess capacity that is plaguing the route and dragging down freight rates.

Container volume on the Asia-Europe trade fell 1.8 percent in January to 1.4 million 20-foot-equivalent units, continuing the negative growth that saw the troubled trade record a year-over-year decline of 3.6 percent in 2015.

Containerized imports at U.S. ports are likely to plunge more than 20 percent in March after increasing 21.4 percent in January and 17.1 percent in February from the same months last year, according to Global Port Tracker.

China has just given clearance to 17 more Brazilian slaughterhouses to export pork, beef and chicken to the Asian country, which would increase meat exports to China by roughly a third as overall trade between China and Brazil is stuck in reverse gear.

Mediterranean Shipping Co. has expanded the port rotation of its India-South Africa service by introducing a direct call at Hazira, a privately-operated cargo complex on India’s west coast, in an attempt to pick up additional hinterland cargo.

The U.S. Coast Guard has said it is communicating with the largest global container line group in an effort to hash out the details behind a controversial new container weight rule set to take effect in just 116 days.

CMA CGM’s revenue and profit slipped last year despite a 6.3 percent volume increase, but the French carrier said it’s counting on cost cuts and the pending acquisition of Singapore’s NOL to overcome a “tough” start to 2016.

Container lines have been accused of raising costs across the global supply chain — from cargo terminals to hinterland transport — as they pursue economies of scale through the deployment of increasing numbers of mega-ships.

The impending shakeup of the membership in three of the four alliances among global container shipping lines will be difficult for beneficial cargo owners over the next year or more, but they may benefit from the changes in the long run, a top Maersk executive said here at the JOC’s 16th annual TPM Conference.

Hyundai Merchant Marine and Hanjin Shipping would stand a better chance of surviving their crushing debts if the carriers were merged, something that Drewry believes is now a distinct possibility.

Hong Kong-listed OOCL is committed to remaining with the G6 Alliance, said chief financial officer Alan Tung, but "everyone is talking to everyone" as two huge merger and acquisition deals threaten to redraw the alliance structures by the end of the year.