Container Shipping News

The software arms race taking place in the global forwarding space shows no signs of relenting, with Miami-based Magaya getting growth capital to fuel its international ambitions.

The premium rate that importers had been paying to ship Asian imports through the US East Coast has dropped considerably over the past few months, allowing the spread between East and West coast spot rates to narrow to pre-pandemic levels.

A Federal Maritime Commission member’s attempt to force marine terminals and ocean carriers to share more data under OSRA-22 has ended with the normalization of the ocean freight market.

Last year’s container surge prompted a harder look at information sharing for container availability and port operations, which New York-New Jersey marine terminals are responding to with new data.

West Coast stakeholders are speaking up against the ILWU, saying contract-related job actions taken by longshoremen are impeding their ability to take delivery of containers at key ports.

Maersk’s move to integrate brands comes days after the carrier and Mediterranean Shipping Co. announced plans to end their 2M alliance and the recent appointment of a new A P Moller - Maersk executive board that starts work on Feb. 1.

As federal and state laws aim to make per diem charges more transparent, California trucking groups say a unified appointment system across the Los Angeles and Long Beach port complex would go a long way toward that goal.

The need for shippers to contextualize freight status data led visibility provider FourKites to build a data connectivity tool for enterprise shippers.

After a 2022 in which skipped calls dragged down volumes at the Port of New Orleans while neighboring Gulf Coast gateways saw booming import growth, officials are hoping a return to steady vessel schedules will help entice shippers back to the port.

The director of the Port of New York and New Jersey has laid out priorities for 2023 that she says will ensure its future growth and ability to maintain market share.

Freightos’ public listing on the NASDAQ will be the first test of how public investors value one of the more prominent logistics technology companies to emerge over the past decade.

The move raises questions whether the carriers will seek new alliance partners, potentially setting off another round of musical chairs involving the other two networks, THE Alliance and the Ocean Alliance.

Hapag-Lloyd’s focus on port-to-port shipping includes pursuing ownership stakes in marine terminal operations, with the acquisition of a 40 percent share of Indian ports operator J M Baxi the latest example.

WiseTech Global, owner of the most widely used forwarding software product, has acquired a prominent vendor of drayage management software, capping a year of takeovers for the company.

Pandemic-driven acceleration in the usage of its digital shipping document product is a sign that blockchain does work in niche applications in global logistics, according to CargoX.

Rates on trades out of India continue to soften in January, most notably to the US, and at least one carrier is seeking general rate increases in a bid to prop up prices.

While there are encouraging signs regarding general merchandise retailers seeing their inventories-to-sales return toward pre-COVID levels, data suggests many sectors have a long way to go before their inventories-to-sales come back to pre-pandemic levels.

With an increased focus by importers on geopolitics and “friend-shoring,” carriers are shifting an increasing volume of deep-sea vessel capacity away to Vietnam — and away from China.

Dirtier products are the unintentional winners in global trade where cleaner finished goods pay higher tariffs, resulting in an effective “subsidy” of polluting commodities, according to the World Trade Organization.

Scrutiny over Flexport’s job cuts earlier this month points to a long-term issue for the venture-backed logistics company: a perceived lack of identity in a market that has long been skeptical of its differentiation.

Even as weak economic conditions prevail during the annual service contract negotiating cycle, it does not automatically mean shippers will be driving the hardest possible bargains with newly vulnerable carriers.

The AWES service itinerary is yet another example of liners’ increasing network consolidation at Mundra for the Indian leg, a single-port call strategy that, arguably, helps them save on marine dues.

The digital sharing of schedule information via Rotterdam’s Nextlogic platform addresses the complexity involved in terminals booking and handling 18,000 container barges a year.

Pressure on shippers to take a more active role in bringing down so-called Scope 3 emissions covering the activities of a company’s third-party vendors — including transportation — has increased in recent years.

The softening outlook from niche carrier Matson foreshadows that the decline in US imports from Asia and the softening freight rates that began last fall are likely to continue through the first half of 2023.

While a 50 percent capacity cut is about typical in the eastbound trans-Pacific during the post-Lunar New Year lull, more blank sailings could be in the offing given the accelerating decline in US import demand.

Demand for ocean visibility surged through the pandemic, including among software providers needing real-time container milestone data, an area that software vendor Terminal49 has targeted in recent years.

Whether OSRA-22 — and increased FMC scrutiny — will produce tangible changes in how carriers and terminals calculate and convey detention and demurrage charges is still yet to be seen, as inaccurate invoices continue to plague shippers.

The pandemic-induced supply chain disruptions in China have left importers searching for more resilience and flexibility in their existing supply chains rather than racing for the exits.

Carriers on the Asia-Europe trade have stepped up capacity management measures as demand weakens through the traditionally busy Lunar New Year period and beyond.

A partnership between venture firm Northstar and India’s Allcargo Group is meant to formalize their joint investment plans into logistics-focused startups over the next year.

The narrowing spread between East and West coast spot rates in the eastbound trans-Pacific comes as spot rates to the East Coast have fallen by 18 percent over the past six weeks while West Coast rates have ticked slightly higher.

Import weakness kept volume flat at the merged French ports of Le Havre, Rouen, and Paris, but an improved river and rail network resulted in a large rise in hinterland traffic.

Shippers are generally willing to share in the cost of reducing carbon emissions, but they worry a lack of transparency in pass-through charges could allow shipping lines to continue burning fossil fuels.

Decarbonizing its entire business by 2040 requires collaboration across Maersk’s global supply chain, pushing the carrier to sign partnerships in strategic areas to achieve its net-zero ambitions.

The growth at the Port of New York and New Jersey was accompanied by persistent container and vessel backlogs and truck congestion, but volumes are expected to taper off in 2023.

The IEX service’s nine-vessel routing has experienced serious reliability challenges since early last year amid the pandemic-linked port flow turmoil.

Despite the fourth-quarter crash in revenues, all three Taiwan-based carriers still booked record revenues for the full year, suggesting they will report bumper profits for 2022.

Zim has joined a growing group of companies that see potential in giving small importers and exporters access to digital finance tools through an investment in an Israel-based startup.

The West Coast’s share of US imports from Asia will continue to deteriorate in the first quarter and beyond until terminal operators and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union agree on a new contract, sources say.