International ports

To stay ahead of expected trade growth in the country’s northwestern region, the government of India has kicked off a plan to build a new deep-water satellite port complex north of Mumbai harbor with public and private investments.

Pyeongtaek-Dangjin has a thriving automotive trade and aims to knock Busan out as South Korea’s busiest gateway for vehicle volume.

Privately-operated Krishnapatnam Port Container Terminal, riding high on significant traffic gains last fiscal year, has received a further boost with state-owned rail operator Container Corporation of India launching a new hinterland link to the east coast harbor.

APM Terminals said that weeding out drug traffickers from its dockworker ranks at the Port of Callao is a priority as well as a main point of contention in an ongoing strike at the port.

Phnom Penh Autonomous Port is preparing to launch a public offering in order to raise funds for the construction of a new $10 million terminal to support Cambodia’s growing exports to Western consumers.

Short-sea ship operator Qatar Navigation Lines has introduced a dedicated container feeder service between India and the Middle East.

An APM Terminals executive said the company remains committed to development of a large Black Sea terminal at the Georgia port of Poti, which the terminal operator purchased four years ago.

India’s Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, or Nhava Sheva, which had been on the receiving end of intense shipper complaints over cargo delays in the recent past, is turning things around with an equipment upgrade and the introduction of other proactive measures.

It’s been a little more than three months since the inaugural statements of the new Greek government, dominated by its radical-left Syriza component, said it would block sales of national strategic assets.

The tender process for nine new port concessions at Santos, the largest container gateway in South America, is so complicated that it may take a year to resolve the differences between various factions. That will likely allow tenders for other “simpler” ports may move ahead of it in the queue, said Robert Grantham, a director for the ShipConsult consultancy based in Navegantes.

Xiamen port has received a multi-million dollar subsidy from the Chinese government for the expansion of the port’s main channel.

The U.K.’s largest container port has a masterplan that includes doubling its capacity by 2030.

The Thai government has approved construction on a new harbor at the country’s largest port at Laem Chabang.

Dockworkers in Israel have ended a two-day strike protesting the creation of new foreign-run port terminals.

Two of Israel’s largest seaports remained closed Thursday after dockworkers defied a court order, leaving their posts in opposition to new government contracts with private port operators.

The expansion of the Panama Canal early next year will make an enormous quantity of container ship tonnage available for services that transit the canal, wiping away current capacity restrictions that restrict usage to only small and inefficient ships by today’s standards.

Gulf states in the Middle East are expanding capacity and investing billions of dollars in their ports to accommodate booming traffic in the Asia-Europe trade lane.

Replacement labor used by APM Terminals to fill in for striking dockworkers at Peru's Port of Callao has started to affect container operations, according to the labor union's spokesman.

Krishnapatnam Port Container Terminal, an emerging alternative gateway on India’s southeastern coast, last week celebrated the first vessel call of the Chennai-Colombo-Gulf (CCG) service, a weekly intra-regional loop operated jointly by Simatech Shipping and Evergreen Line

Chicken exporters are among those shippers that have suffered major delays and rollovers of cargo at the south Brazilian port of Itajai after waves as high as 3.5 meter (11.4 feet) closed the gateway for four days earlier this week.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang this week visited Brazil and other South American countries and offered to spend billions of dollars on major infrastructure projects, including in the ports and railroad sectors.

The Suez Canal is scheduled to be wider and deeper by the end of the summer, but the potential savings of time and money for shippers and carriers is not a concern for Panama Canal Authority CEO Jorge Quijano said Wednesday.

The new discount, effective on June 1, comes on top of the existing Environmental Ship Index, which means that ships can benefit from a 30 percent reduction in port dues for every call, the port authority said.

The Port of Hamburg can no longer claim to be Europe’s second-largest container port.

Fruit exports from Chile and Peru are off to a promising start in 2015 thanks in large part to better weather and increasing demand from key overseas markets.

The degree to which the Panama Canal expansion will alter the global cold chain is yet to be determined, but stakeholders are already seeing signs of a rise in business.

France’s River Seine port of Rouen has for a long time made a speciality of the north-south regular container trades, particularly those between northern Europe and west Africa. But the port no longer sees a future for itself as a major container port, not even as one specializing in the north Europe-Africa trades.

The government of Cyprus believes that the island’s position in the Mediterranean makes it a natural choice as an international port and logistics hub.

Evergreen Line and King Ocean Services will begin calling Haiti’s new Port Lafito in the coming months, according to port developers GB Group.

The long-stalled privatization of the port of Piraeus is finally underway with three foreign companies bidding for control of the leading Mediterranean transhipment hubs.

Sinda-Rio, the ship agents association for Rio de Janeiro, is protesting an effort by a group of port workers to do what they deem unnecessary work that will adds cost to shippers using Brazil’s third busiest port.

Roughly 650 union dockworkers at the busiest terminal in Callao, Peru, the largest container gateway for the west coast of South America, have threatened to begin an indefinite strike Wednesday.

Logistics providers in India’s Nhava Sheva Port complex reported a “system outage” temporarily disrupted truck traffic at Jawaharlal Nehru Container Terminal Sunday late afternoon, adding to inland infrastructure woes that had already been building there in the past year.

After more than 18 months of delays, the much heralded first phase of Brazil’s more than Reais 10 billion ($3.36 billion) port concession program received the go-ahead to proceed from the Tribunal de Contas da Uniao.

South Korea's Busan port is consolidating its position as northeastern Asia’s transshipment hub.

The port authority for Santos in Brazil, Codesp, has been given permission to increase rates by a whopping 31.7 percent, and shippers should prepare for the increased costs.

Container volumes at major state-owned port complexes in India expanded 3.9 percent year-over-year in April, the first month of fiscal year 2015-16, continuing a healthy growth trend seen during the past year, according to the latest provisional port statistics compiled by JOC.com.

India signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran to build and operate cargo facilities at the Chabahar port, a free trade zone site on the Gulf of Oman, with the aim of allowing New Delhi a sea-land access route to Afghanistan.

Port Metro Vancouver, Canada’s largest port, is a step closer to building a new container terminal. The port has submitted an environmental impact statement for a new three-berth container terminal in Delta, British Columbia.