Port News

Container throughput at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, India’s largest major, public container gateway, edged up nearly 1 percent in December compared to the same month in 2014, the newest port data collected by JOC.com shows.

Sihanoukville Autonomous Port, the operator of Cambodia’s largest port, plans to list on the Cambodia Securities Exchange in the first half of 2016.

The CMA CGM Benjamin Franklin, the largest container ship to call in the United States, docked at Oakland on Friday, six days after stopping at Los Angeles on its first U.S. call.

China’s Ningbo-Zhoushan Port, the fifth-largest in the world and third-busiest in China, lifted 20 million 20-foot-equivalent units for the first time in its history, joining an elite club of four other ports that have passed that milestone.

DP World said its International Container Transshipment Terminal, or Vallarpadam Terminal, at India’s Port of Cochin has had a “remarkable” year of growth, with significant volume and productivity gains amid tight market conditions.

Adani Ports’ aggressive efforts to woo more ship calls at its newly-acquired Kattupalli Port on India’s east coast appear to be bearing fruit.

The government of India reiterated the importance it places on participating in the development of the port of Chabahar in southeastern Iran as the two countries work on agreeing to specific terms that would allow the project to commence.

South Korea logistics company CJ Korea Express has sold 20 percent of its stake in its loss-making terminal in Busan port to a unit of China Shipping Group.

The building of a terminal with an initial capacity of 500,000 twenty-foot-equivalent units annually in Nova Scotia inched closer to reality after a China infrastructure construction company earlier this month agreed to study the feasibility of such a project

The awarding of a public-private-partnership contract to DP World for the construction and operation of International Container Transshipment Terminal, also known as Vallarpadam Terminal, at India’s Port of Cochin has come under fire from the country’s public spending watchdog.

The time that truckers spend taking delivery of containers inside of marine terminals in Los Angeles is not nearly as long as the drayage industry believes, but there is still room for improvement, the president of PierPass said Tuesday.

China approved the merger of China Merchants Group and Sinotrans & CSC as it continues to restructure its state-owned sector and create companies that can compete internationally.

Japan’s transport ministry has unveiled plans to ramp up its spending on measures to shore up the sagging international competitiveness of key domestic container ports as part of broader efforts to revitalize the economy.

The president of the International Longshoremen’s Association said the union is pleased that the appropriations bill that Congress approved this month includes a two-year delay in the “Cadillac tax” on high-end medical plans.

Having embarked on an expansion program, Incheon port aims to handle 2.5 million 20-foot-equivalent units in 2016.

In an attempt to cope with expected volume growth and improve productivity, Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, India’s largest public container handler, has embarked on a plan to build an inland port at Jalna, about 225 miles from the Nhava Sheva harbor.

Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone on Monday named Karan Adani, its current executive director, to the position of chief executive officer, as India’s biggest port operator sets forth an ambitious growth plan amid sluggish global demand.

Successfully working the two largest container ships ever to call at a North American port in the same week required an extraordinary effort involving container lines, APM Terminals, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, the railroads, chassis providers and three federal government agencies, Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka said Monday.

Container volumes at the Northwest Seaport Alliance of Seattle and Tacoma increased strongly in November compared to the same month last year, which was when work slowdowns by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union began and terminal productivity plummeted in line with their coastwide contract negotiations.

The much-anticipated Panama Canal expansion project is now 96 percent complete, but will not be open to commercial traffic in April as previously reported, according to the canal authority.

Russia’s recently commissioned Bronka seaport is positioned to become a major Baltic hub thanks to its depth and proximity to the critical market of St. Petersburg.

South America’s leading container port of Santos has discovered and detained record levels of counterfeit goods in both tonnage and monetary terms as customs authorities step up their cooperation and detection efforts to crack down on fake imports.

Indira Container Terminal Pvt. Ltd. at India’s Port of Mumbai last week began container-handling at its offshore berth with the call of the Bahri Yanbu, ending months of uncertainty surrounding the future of the new, privately-developed cargo facility.

Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone last week received the first batch of new marine equipment that India’s biggest port operator plans to install at its under-construction Adani CMA Mundra Terminal, a joint venture with France shipping giant CMA CGM.

Expansion is a hot topic at La Spezia Container Terminal these days, and so is growth thanks to numerous investments to boost capacity and productivity.

Terminal operations in Los Angeles-Long Beach are back to normal after a year-long bout with congestion, chassis shortages and labor problems but average trucker turn times in the largest U.S. port complex remain stuck at the unacceptable level of about 90 minutes.

Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka is one step closer to following through on his threat to sell Port of New York-New Jersey land in the city if the container complex doesn’t contribute more cash to the financially struggling city.

Grimaldi Group has thrown its hat into the ring for two multi-purpose terminals that will be concessioned in Brazil in the next two years.

The Hong Kong Liner Shipping Association has applied for a block exemption order from the city’s competition law that came into effect on Dec. 14 and effectively outlaws the vessel sharing agreements that dominate shipping activity at the port.

Container transshipment volumes at the Port of Busan were up almost 10 percent in October as the South Korea hub steadily grows this transit cargo segment than accounted for 53 percent of its throughput during the month.

The California Labor Commissioner ruled in favor of 38 drivers who claimed that drayage company Pacific 9 Transportation misclassified them as independent contractors, awarding the drivers a total of $6.9 million in stolen wages, with an average individual award of $182,270.

Mitsui-Soko Holdings Co., a major transportation and logistics service provider in Japan, has agreed to acquire a container terminal operator at home and established three new subsidiaries abroad to further expand its global operations.

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are taking a fresh look at short haul-rail of containers to an inland cluster of distribution centers as a way to combat systemic congestion at the largest North American container gateway.

China’s Cosco Pacific is reportedly the only company that has submitted a bid for a 51 percent stake in the state-owned port of Piraeus.

Throughput at China’s top 20 container ports rose 4 percent in the first 11 months of the year compared to 2014 as most of the mainland terminals continue to grow volumes despite slowing trade putting the brakes on exports.

Rotterdam dockworkers have voted to strike in the New Year to protest potential job losses at the port’s new highly automated container terminals.

The U.S. West Coast is not yet ready to handle regular calls from 18,000 twenty-foot-equivalent unit vessels despite CMA CGM’s deployment of mega-ship Benjamin Franklin on the trade, according to Drewry.

Specifics on how the logistics chain will handle the new verified weight rules are beginning to emerge with Maher Terminals notifying the trade that it will only accept containers for export if carriers have provided the verified weight by electronic data interchange transmission before the box arrives at the terminal gate.

Port Everglades said it expects to gain about 128,000 twenty-foot-equivalent units over the next 10 years through the renewal of Florida International Terminal's lease and relocation of the facility as the port works to accommodate mega-ships.

U.S. Federal Maritime Chairman Mario Cordero said he's prepared to try to shut down the PierPass program at the Southern California ports via a federal injunction if an agency review of the program finds it to be in violation of the Shipping Act and terminal operators don’t move fast enough to address his concerns.