Container Shipping News

French ocean carrier CMA CGM is reported to be negotiating the sale of a 30 percent stake to a billionaire Belgian financier and a French government investment fund for $650 million.

Matson Navigation will add a second string of vessels to its China-Long Beach service, bringing new capacity to resurgent trans-Pacific trade lanes.

Maersk Line advised its customers that it will impose a surcharge on heavy-weight cargo in 20-foot containers bound from Europe, the Middle East and India to Australia and all destinations in the Pac

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., on Thursday introduced a bill that would enhance the ability of ports to enact clean-air programs, while opening the door to unionization of harbor truck drivers.

Direct ChassisLink, the company set up by Maersk Line to manage its chassis fleet and charge truckers a daily fee for their use, will expand its chassis program to the Southeast and Gulf inland region

Japanese carriers NYK, MOL and "K" Line reported profits in their April-June quarter as rising volumes and rates pushed their container operations into the black.

Norway’s Green Reefers said it will join the recently established Hamburg Reefer Pool on Aug. 1.

The government-affiliated Japan Bank for International Cooperation said on Thursday that it has signed a loan agreement worth about $47.4 million to support the export of a Japanese vessel to a Singap

Maersk Line will seek a general freight rate increase on cargo moving on its services from the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East to South America West Coast and Central America (excluding Cuba).

First-half container throughput at the Port of Marseilles Fos rose 17 percent from the same period last year in both tonnage terms and container units.

U.S. steel imports declined by 13.6 percent in June compared with May but were up by nearly 130 percent from a year earlier, government figures show.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke used a July 28 visit to the UPS Global Operations Center in Louisville, Ky., to woo U.S.

World trade by sea, land and air will grow by 8.1 percent in 2010 after declining by 7.2 percent last year, according to a forecast published by IHS Global Insight.

The Port of Le Havre plans to build a new multimodal terminal that will act as a transfer platform for the transshipment of containers and trailers between rail and barge.

Orders to U.S. factories for big-ticket manufactured goods dropped 1 percent last month, the second straight monthly decline and the largest drop since August 2009, the Commerce Department said.

Startup ocean carrier Hainan P O Shipping is asking the Federal Maritime Commission to grant the same exemption to the Controlled Carrier Act that the FMC gave to three other Chinese carriers in 2004.

Sea Star Line is the third carrier to agree to a multimillion-dollar settlement of a class-action civil antitrust lawsuit alleging price-fixing in the U.S. mainland-Puerto Rico trade.

Deutsche Bahn, the German railway and logistics group, boosted first half profits by over 26 percent from a year ago driven by a 40 percent surge in rail freight volumes and significantly higher air a

Senate legislation introduced Tuesday would suspend the 100 percent scanning requirement for marine containers in favor of a “more reasonable” risk-based approach, until scanning technolog

Greek and Chinese ship-owners are the most active buyers of second-hand container vessels as the crisis in container shipping attracts non-traditional operators to the sector, according to Alphaliner,

A bill introduced in the Senate on Monday would continue the congressional call to scan 100 percent of ocean containers, but includes a small change in language that could make the idea more feasible.

Maersk Line expects to return the Charlotte Maersk to service in August after repairs are made to the container ship that caught fire this month in the waters near Malaysia, the carrier said.

Containerized imports at the Port of Seattle exploded last month, increasing 93.3 percent compared to June of 2009.

CMA CGM said it took delivery of the CMA CGM Leo, the fifth in a series of 12 vessels that will be delivered between 2010 and 2011.

Shipowner Diana Shipping said Tuesday its recently established container ship unit, Diana Containerships, chartered out its first two box vessels.

DP World said it handled 23.7 million 20-foot equivalent container units at its 50 operating terminals in the first half of 2010, an increase of 16 percent on the same period last year and ahead of th

Belgian billionaire financier Albert Frere is in negotiations with CMA CGM to acquire a stake in the heavily indebted French ocean container carrier, according to media reports.

Orient Overseas Container Line, adding to a growing list of surcharges to compensate for port congestion in the Indian sub-continent, said Monday it will apply port congestion surcharges on shipments

The Bremerhaven auto terminal, Europe’s largest, is operating normally after it was overwhelmed by a surge in German car exports to Asia and North America.

The State of Pennsylvania is closer to choosing a group to design, operate and maintain a major marine terminal in the former Navy Yard in South Philadelphia.

APL retrofitted five of its container ships for cold-ironing, which allows them to turn off their diesel generators at berth and connect instead to shoreside power that produces fewer emissions.

Cosco Container Lines said it will impose a congestion surcharge on cargo moving through India’s Port of Nhava Sheva (Jawaharlal Nehru).

Dockwise, the Oslo-listed heavy-lift shipping company, said it signed four marine transport contracts worth a combined $45 million.

Fesco, owner of Russia’s biggest ocean container carrier, sold its 50 percent stake in National Container Company, a container terminal operator, to an unnamed investor for a reported $900 milli

Regular naval patrols and sophisticated defense strategies among shipowners are reducing the number of pirate attacks worldwide, but don’t be fooled by the numbers.

If only Hasbro could transform a toy boat into the real thing . . . .

UPS says it is seeing some ocean freight shipments switch to air because of an “ocean squeeze” on capacity, and the company expects more shippers to move to expedited transport as demand i

Only 2 percent of the world’s container ships are idle, compared with 11.6 percent at the start of the year, Alphaliner reports in its weekly newsletter.

The Port of Montreal, shut down since Monday morning by an employer lockout of longshoremen, will reopen for work at 8 a.m. Saturday following a compromise agreement reached Thursday evening.