Container Shipping News

Mediterranean Shipping Co. is adding a new container service in the India-Australia-Mediterranean route, called the Australia Express, as the Geneva-based carrier beefs up its India connections to serve growing trade volumes.

Militants loyal to ISIS could bring Somali-style piracy to the Mediterranean, threatening the world’s largest trade lane, European officials warn.

Port productivity as ships get larger is stalled resulting in ships remaining in port for longer periods of time, delays to cargo and higher costs for carriers.

DFDS's pre-tax profit soared 56 percent in 2014, driven by increased short sea traffic on its key North Sea trades and reduced losses on the English Channel.

Mediterranean Shipping Co. plans in late April to launch a new container service directly linking India and China to capitalize on the booming intra-Asia cargo trade.

The top 20 Chinese ports had a throughput of 15.5 million 20-foot containers in January, with Shanghai and Shenzhen terminals handling almost half of them, according to Shanghai Shipping Exchange data.

The last two months of U.S. West Coast congestion appear to have cemented many shippers’ plans to divert cargo to other ports, according to a recent JOC.com survey.

Matson posted increases in profit for the fourth quarter and full year of 2014 and said it expects “modestly higher” operating results in 2015, aside from the company’s pending acquisition of Horizon Line’s Alaska service.

Less container ship capacity is expected to be scrapped this year, as the price of steel continues to drop and the pool of older vessels shrinks, analysts say.

Shippers can better avoid getting hit with higher costs from unscrupulous ocean carriers by insuring contracts don’t allow carriers to hike drayage and other costs just because port congestion pushes up delivery rates, possibly triggering demurrage charges, especially on door delivery shipments, a maritime attorney said.

Maersk Group is tipped to announce its second share buy-back in six months on Wednesday when it unveils fourth-quarter 2014 results that are likely to be dominated by surging container shipping profits.

Trade between China and Iran has been growing at almost 40 percent a year since 2012, driven by rapidly rising consumer demand, according to a Seabury Group study.

The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway system’s navigation season is scheduled to reopen March 27 following its annual winter shutdown that began Jan. 1, U.S. and Canadian authorities announced.

Trans-Atlantic carriers face a struggle to hike rates amid rising capacity and new competition, even as the euro’s slide against the U.S. dollar boosts shipments on the key westbound leg, according to Drewry Shipping Consultants.

The U.S. and Canada cleared a big hurdle to building a second span over the Detroit River, a critical crossing and sometime choke-point for cross-border trade.

Hamburg Sud said it expects to seal the acquisition of the container shipping operations of Compania Chilena de Navegacion Interoceanica by the end of March.

With growing demand and difficulty in gaining shipbuilding capacity, Taiwan's fourth-largest container carrier announced plans Monday to order four 1,800-TEU vessels.

While Greece struggles to escape financial ruin and an exit from the eurozone, it has cemented its position as the world’s leading shipping nation.

The falling oil price is having a talismanic effect on the cargo shipping industry, boosting consumer spending, raising U.S. demand for China imports and improving the profitability of container lines, research from Barclays has found.

United Arab Shipping Co. on Monday said it will make its debut on the North Atlantic container trade lane in May via a new vessel-sharing partnership with French carrier CMA CGM and Germany’s Hamburg-Sud.

The European Shippers’ Council urged competition regulators to step up monitoring of deals like the increased collaboration between CMA CGM and Hamburg-Sud, which “will make sure the container liner market will be one step closer to total convergence.”

U.S. West Coast port congestion and the phasing in of major shipping alliances pulled global carrier reliability to a record low, adding an extra sting to rising rates hitting shippers, according to Drewry’s most recent Carrier Performance Insight report.

The low sulfur fuel regulation that came into effect in January on shipping lanes in northern Europe and the U.S. and Canada has had a “virtually zero “cost impact due to the collapse in the price of oil and resistance from shippers, according to Drewry Shipping Consultants.

Shipping Corporation of India swung to a Rs. 31.3 crore (about $5 million) net profit in its fiscal third quarter, which ended Dec. 31, from a $10.6 million loss in the same period of 2013, driven by cost savings and higher freight rates that helped offset a marginal decline in revenue.

Demand for extra ships tied to the U.S. West Coast longshore labor showdown is driving up charter rates for certain classes of container ships.

Containerization of perishable cargoes seems to have hit a snag — at least temporarily — as the slump in bunker prices makes conventional reefer ships more competitive again.

Japan’s energetic farm-export drive is bearing fruit, as the country’s overseas shipments of agricultural, fishery and forestry products mushroomed 11.1 percent in 2014 from the previous year to a record high of 611.7 billion yen (US $5.14 billion).

CMA CGM is equipping its containers with an innovative real-time data monitoring system that will enable the carrier and its customers to keep track of the location and specific conditions of their cargoes.

Shreyas Shipping and Logistics rebounded to a Rs. 22.4 crore (US $3.6 million) net profit in the third fiscal quarter from a net loss of about $468,000 in the same period in 2013, driven by a significant growth in the shipping activity that has helped the company become a pan-India feeder line.

After three years of negotiations, Japan and Mongolia have signed a free trade agreement, paving the way for the trade pact to take effect later this year or early in 2016.

Danaos Corp.’s most recent earnings highlighted an improving container ship charter market as the Greek ship-owner posted a 56 percent increase in adjusted net income in the fourth quarter of 2014.

There are now more than 1 million TEUs of capacity on ultra-large ships on the waters or on order after Evergreen Marine announced late last month it had finalized plans to charter 11 new vessels with capacity for 18,000 TEUs each

French ocean carrier CMA CGM has introduced the biggest container ship to call at a Brazilian port as it beefs up its Asia- East Coast South America service.

Spot rates on the Asia-U.S. trades soared this week as trans-Pacific carriers prepared to slap on another general rate increase and the East Coast route continued to benefit from heavy levels of West Coast port congestion.

The idle container ship fleet has fallen to its lowest levels in more than three years, in large part because of the “worst-ever” congestion on the U.S. West Coast, according to industry analyst Alphaliner.

The Shanghai Shipping Freight Exchange has completed the first trading of container shipping capacity in foreign trade included in a forward agreement contract, but futures contracts in container shipping internationally have been very slow to take off.

The shipping industry — container carriers included — should prepare for a low-sulfur fuel requirement to be imposed on schedule in 2020, a development industry leaders have said will result in carriers incurring tens of billions of dollars annually in higher fuel costs, with no clear mechanism for recovering those costs from customers.

CMA CGM and Hamburg Sud are expanding their current cooperation agreement to several additional liner trade routes in the latest consolidation of global container networks.

Costamare, the Greece-based container ship owner, is eying further expansion of its 59-vessel fleet this year after reporting a 15 percent year-over-year increase in fourth quarter profit.

U.S. trade moving on container ships directly via European ports, including transshipments, increased 2.1 percent year-over-year to 4.6 million 20-foot-equivalent units in the 12 months ending September 2014, according to PIERS, the data division of JOC Group.