Port News

The Port of Oakland is using two smartphone applications to improve trucker turn times and address the long visit times at marine terminals that are the bane of harbor trucking companies at many U.S. ports.

German container terminal group Eurogate warned of growing headwinds in the container handling market due to reduced global traffic growth and the forthcoming reshuffle among liner shipping alliances, after it reported increased earnings in 2015.

India’s major ports controlled by the union government recorded a 3 percent year-over-year increase in container throughput in fiscal year 2015-16, which ended March 31, according to the newest provisional port statistics collected by JOC.com.

Intermodal equipment providers are in the early stages of using GPS technology to track their chassis in seaport and inland locations, and if the return on investment is adequate, IEPs anticipate greater use of the technology.

APM Terminals-operated Gateway Terminals India resumed normal vessel operations Tuesday morning after outsourced workers handling rubber-tire gantry crane operations ended a four-day strike that shut down export gates at the terminal and slowed down cargo handling at India's busiest public port complex, Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust.

Ocean containers are piling up at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, threatening to impact normal operations at India’s biggest public port complex, as a stoppage by unionized workers handling rubber-tire gantry crane operations entered its fourth day on Monday.

Labor problems associated with rubber-tire gantry crane operations that had been a key contributor to congestion and bottlenecks at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust last year have resurfaced, hours after JOC.com reported that stable industrial relations are imperative if India’s biggest public container handler intends to cope with the challenges ahead in this era of ever-larger mega ship calls and fierce competition from nearby private ports.

Terminal operators in Los Angeles-Long Beach do not have the infrastructure that would allow them to weigh containers before they are loaded onto ships, so shippers will have to make other arrangements for obtaining the required verified gross mass of the containers before a July 1 international deadline takes effect, the terminals stated late Friday through a spokesperson.

U.S. East and Gulf Coast ports have been winning the market share battle in overall U.S. containerized ocean trade since 2008, and in 2015 they overcame West Coast ports in containerized imports, too.

U.S. West Coast ports in February handled 33.7 percent more laden containers than they did last February, demonstrating a solid recovery from the dark period in early 2015 when labor problems created the worst port congestion in more than a decade.

DP World-operated Nhava Sheva (India) Gateway Terminals at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust on Friday hosted the MSC Cristina, reportedly the largest container ship ever to call Indian shores.

The North American Chassis Pool Cooperative has partnered with Asset Intelligence to deploy a chassis tracking tool designed to improve fleet utilization, enhance billing accuracy and reduce fleet maintenance costs.

All but one of Japan’s five biggest ports posted negative traffic results in 2015 amid growing economic uncertainty both at home and abroad, with only the Port of Kobe weathering the storm well enough to eke out growth.

Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust finished fiscal year 2015-16 with a new record in container lifts even as weaker global demand and other challenges, especially labor flare-ups and landside bottlenecks, hurt the pace of growth at India’s busiest pubic container gateway.

When the CMA CGM Benjamin Franklin pulled out of Los Angeles in late December after an unprecedented effort by the port community to work the largest container ship ever to call at a North American port, no one was prouder than the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

The newly built Bronka seaport plans to end Big Port St. Petersburg’s and Ust-Luga’s dominance of Russia’s Baltic Basin through a flexible pricing policy.

APM Terminals is to invest 758 million euros ($859 million) in Africa’s first automated terminal in the Moroccan transshipment port of Tangier.

The exit of the PMDB party from Brazil’s ruling coalition casts fresh doubt on the ability of the government to adequately dredge the port of Santos in a timely manner as it clears the way for the minister of the Special Ports Ministry, a PMDB member, to leave his post.

Cosco Pacific’s decision to commit more than $1 billion at the beginning of the year to acquire control of the port of Piraeus, once a sleepy and inefficient backwater, is already looking like a winning investment.

HHLA, Hamburg’s leading container handler, has ruled out a recovery in seaborne traffic at its terminals this year following a double-digit decline in 2015 and said it will focus on expansion of its intermodal operations.

The landside bottlenecks plaguing publicly-owned Chennai Port are seen as increasingly benefiting new, privately operated, minor cargo terminals on India’s southeastern coast.

Cosco Pacific Ltd., which has interests in 19 container terminals in China and Hong Kong as well as five overseas terminals, announced a 30.4 percent increase in profit to $382 million boosted by the write back of provisions on the 2013 sale of a stake in China International Marine Containers (Group) Co.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union and Pacific Maritime Association Tuesday entered into formal arbitration over an incident Monday that shut down the largest container terminal in Oakland for one shift.

Container volume at the Port of Wilmington, North Carolina, rose 7.7 percent year-over-year in February after an 8.3 percent increase in January.

The president of an association representing container terminal operators is confident that Brazil will be ready for the Safety of Life at Sea, or SOLAS, Verified Gross Mass rule and has established a Special Technical Group to resolve any final concerns.

United Arab Shipping Co. has appointed TRAC Intermodal as the carrier’s sole chassis provider in the United States. Stuart Sandlin, president of UASC North America, said using a single chassis provider will benefit customers and make UASC more competitive in quoting carrier haulage rates under which the ship line arranges inland transportation.

Busan Port Authority, the operator of the port of Busan, the world’s sixth-largest container port, is planning to invest in overseas port and logistics facilities as a key strategy that will help define the future of the South Korean port.

Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, which has now moved into an era of mega-ship calls on the back of a deeper channel, is inching toward a new record in container lifts during the current fiscal year, which ends March 31.

In the nearly nine years since the Oct. 31, 2007, inauguration of container shipping services through Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Cosco has been the dominant carrier to the port that offers the fastest transit from Asia to the U.S. Midwest.

With the 2008-09 economic recession and the labor problems of 2014-15 behind them, West Coast ports see 2016 as the year they will return to their normal annual growth trend of about 5 percent.

Japan’s government on Friday acquired a majority 50 percent stake in the company operating the ports of Yokohama and Kawasaki for 500 million yen ($4.4 million), allowing the terminal operator to jack up its capital investment.

An on-going analysis of the factors that contribute to marine terminal congestion has industry experts concluding that ports will probably have to implement at least a half-dozen measures in order to relieve what has become one of the biggest bottlenecks in goods movement.

Los Angeles-based startup Cargomatic has named two logistics veterans, one from Coyote and another from CEVA logistics, to its leadership team.

The Panama Canal Authority said its new locks will be inaugurated June 26, more than two years after the original completion target.

NUTEP, a container terminal in the Novorossiysk seaport, will double its container capacity in the coming years through the building of a new modern berth for mega-ships with capacities of 10,000 twenty-foot-equivalent units, according to Alex Papusha, NUTEP’s director of operations.

Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust has entered a new era of mega-ship calls after India’s busiest public container handler completed a dredging project that deepened its fairway to 14 meters (46 feet).

Containerized imports in Oakland surged a remarkable 89.7 percent in February compared to February 2015. This was the second consecutive month of strong growth at the Northern California port, and it follows similar surges at other West Coast ports, which could indicate that U.S. import growth in 2016 will be greater than the approximately 5 percent predicted by economists.

The Port of Houston’s loaded container volume last month was 1 percent above February 2015, when the port was seeing a surge in volume from diversions caused by U.S. West Coast port congestion.

Embraport, one of Brazil’s newest container terminals in the Port of Santos, is looking to bring in a new partner to spread the risk of running the operation against a background of falling box volumes in Brazil, sharp falls in profitable imports, and overcapacity at Santos.

International Longshoremen’s Association President Harold Daggett said Newark Mayor Ras Baraka’s claims of discriminatory hiring at the Port of New York and New Jersey were “baseless” and “misleading.”