Container Shipping News

CMA CGM said it has successfully closed the issue of 725 million euros ($812 million) of its 7.75 percent senior unsecured bonds due 2021.

The top three ocean carriers — Maersk Line, Mediterranean Shipping Co. and CMA CGM — have boosted their share of global container capacity to 38 percent from 26 percent over the past decade and are continuing to pull ahead of their rivals, according to Drewry Maritime Research.

The worldwide rally in containership charter rates may have lost most of its steam, but not for those with the right ships in the right regions, which right now would be the Atlantic.

Shippers have plenty to worry about — including volatile pricing and cargo delays — but piracy should be less of a concern, as the number of incidents has been falling since 2010.

Mitsubishi Corp. has launched a $300 million fund to acquire, manage and lease container vessels to major shipping firms, but the fund’s size apparently fell well short of the Japanese giant’s expectations.

"Shippers are still driven by costs rather than green ethics," according to a senior manager of financial consultant PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Maersk Line and Mediterranean Shipping Co. announced they are cutting capacity by a third on their recently launched Asia-Mediterranean services “to meet current and anticipated demands” on the route.

Chief executives of U.S. domestic carriers TOTE and Matson and of the Pacific Maritime Association have been named to receive this year’s Admiral of the Ocean Sea Award from the United Seamen’s Service.

Retailers and their suppliers dominated the JOC’s Top 100 U.S. Importers rankings once again in 2014. Here’s a quick look at the companies making up the Top 10 importers in U.S. foreign trade via ocean container transport.

The next generation of mega-ships is already in the planning stages, despite hesitation from some of the world’s largest shippers about their overall value and feasibility.

The capacity of container ships ordered so far this year is up 60 percent on the same period in 2014, at just over 1 million 20-foot-equivalent units, driven by a wave of contracts for mega vessels, according to Alphaliner.

U.S. containerized imports are forecast to rise 5.4 percent year-over-year in the second half of the year after inbound volume at the major gateways for retail goods hit normal levels in April, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker.

The volume of containers shipped via publicly-owned major ports in India expanded 4.3 percent year-over-year in April and May, the first two fiscal months, according to provisional port statistics collected by JOC.com.

Declining U.S. exports are offsetting U.S. imports and confronting container lines with tough decisions in the Mediterranean-North America trade.

Swire Shipping, the liner shipping division of China Navigation, is teaming up with Rickmers-Linie, the breakbulk and heavy-lift carrier, to enhance services in India and the Mideast.

LONDON – Eurotunnel, the operator of the subsea rail link between the U.K. and France, has sold its ferry operation to rival carrier DFDS a year after British regulators demanded its withdrawal from the cross-Channel route.

Brazilian shoe manufacturers are this month eyeing up export opportunities to Italy, with the national footwear association mounting an expedition to Lake Garda in an effort to find Italian markets.

CMA CGM has ordered six ships with capacities of 14,000 twenty-foot-equivalent units for delivery in early 2017 by South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries Ulsan shipyard.

Container ship lines are shaking up their alliances operating between Asia and the West Coast of South America.

Belgian container ship owner and operator Delphis has doubled its order for two liquefied natural gas-ready ships that will be carry up to 1,900 twenty-foot-equivalent units and be strengthened for operation in ice.

ST PETERSBURG — Western sanctions and the fall in oil prices that devalued the rouble have devastated Russian container volume and sent shockwaves through the sectors dependent on the business. But there is some hope that fortunes will begin to improve in the coming months.

LONDON –The intra-Asia trade will continue to drive container ship demand as carriers launch new services across the region, according to Alphaliner.

Shipping Corporation of India has revamped its intra-regional SCI Middle East India Liner Express service deployment to include additional domestic port coverage. The change provides a big push to the Narendra Modi-led government’s “sagar-mala” project, which is designed to upgrade the national freight transportation system via coastal shipping.

The U.S. and European Union are in talks over a new trade deal that could give shipping lines greater bargaining power over port services and give multimodal operators priority to tap inland freight connections, according to documents shared Wednesday by Wikileaks.

Unmanned cargo ship will usher in a whole new era in shipping, requiring a rethink of operations and business models in the industry, according to panelists at Nor-Shipping in Norway.

Airbus is using multipurpose ships to transport large components from Hamburg, Germany, to Mobile, Alabama, for production of the European aircraft manufacturer’s first U.S.-built planes.

LONDON – Eurotunnel, the operator of the rail tunnel between the U.K. and France, announced its exit from shipping operations between the two countries in July, ending a bitter three year battle with British competition regulators.

China United Lines, part of Unitrans Group, has become the latest ocean carrier to try to tap growing demand on the intra-Asia trade lane by introducing a direct service between India and China.

CaroTrans is launching a new weekly less-than-container-load service between Southeastern U.S. and Japanese markets, cutting out transshipment and avoiding congestion at ports in Los Angeles and Busan.

Zim Integrated Shipping Services has restructured its participation in two U.S. Gulf-east coast of South America services it shares with other carriers.

China and South Korea have cleared the way towards implementing a free trade agreement later this year that will eventually scrap duties on 90 percent of the goods traded between the two nations.

In the latest sign of the challenge facing Asia-Europe carriers to make money in the busiest global shipping lane, the G6 Alliance said it would cancel two sailings, citing low demand. Yet canceling individual sailings will likely do little to quell analysts’ view that significantly more capacity, such as entire services, would need to be suspended in order to meaningfully impact supply and demand in the Asia-Europe market.

In its new mega-ship order announced on Tuesday, Maersk Line took a conservative road, achieving a 7 percent capacity increase in ships of almost identical hull dimensions to its Triple-E class. In the process, it is showing how carriers are not automatically opting to build ever-larger ships to push the boundaries of economies of scale.

Taiwanese carrier Evergreen Line and Turkey's Arkas Line are launching a new collaborative West-East Mediterranean Service.

Maersk Line today signed an order for eleven 19,630 TEUs container ships, in a $1.8 billion deal aimed at consolidating its ranking as the world’s largest ocean carrier.

Fesco’s first-quarter earnings rose 5.4 percent as cost savings offset a slump in container volumes resulting from a fragile Russian economy and a depreciating rouble.

United Arab Shipping Co. is seeking to broaden its service reach by adding refrigerated container capacity and joining CMA CGM and Hamburg Sud in a weekly vessel-sharing agreement in a bid for a bigger slice of trans-Atlantic trade.

Pasha Hawaii will add a second weekly call at Los Angeles and discontinue direct calls at Tacoma in a service overhaul that follows the carrier’s takeover last week of Horizon Lines’ Hawaii routes.

India’s federal cabinet on Saturday gave final approval to an agreement allowing the introduction of coastal shipping services between the country’s east coast cargo gateways and ports in Bangladesh.