Port News

Norfolk Southern Railway will shut one of two container spillover lots outside Memphis this week after a significant reduction in rail boxes coming into the inland hub from Savannah.

The filing is just the latest in a barrage of complaints made against various container lines with the FMC in recent months, a flurry accelerated by major reform of US shipping law that went into effect in June.

Southeastern US ports are anticipating a volume slowdown in 2023, and hope to take the time to increase capacity ahead of the next surge in demand.

As the US eases sanctions that have helped cripple the Venezuelan economy, Maersk’s Sealand subsidiary is taking a small step to re-establish trade ties by offering a weekly service between the two countries.

After a messy 2022, the West Coast is starting 2023 nearly congestion-free as worries rise about how much market share has been lost to the East and Gulf coasts.

With strong economic and population growth and freight related to so-called giga projects expected to boost demand, officials in Saudi Arabia are making big bets on maritime trade, including building a new 9 million TEU container port.

At the core of the concerns expressed by carriers and terminal operators are what they say are the limits the FMC’s proposed rule on detention and demurrage would place on their ability to bill truckers and consignees.

The International Longshoremen’s Association won a victory related to a dispute at the Port of Charleston as federal labor regulators say a lawsuit aimed at preserving their work on container ships was legal.

New Jersey’s warehousing growth of just 1 percent is butting up against the 8 percent volume growth at the Port of New York and New Jersey, with ever more shippers looking to tap the port’s capacity.

HMM’s north–south inland solution in India ties in with an evolving industry strategy to aggregate cargo with a single port call, allowing carriers to maximize capacity utilization and save on port charges.

THE Alliance member Hapag-Lloyd says shippers can expect a “simplified” network in 2023, but that could mean larger ships, fewer services, and less transshipment.

While congestion at US ports and inland hubs has eased significantly amid declining import volumes, stakeholders need to act now to ready themselves for the next cargo surge, supply chain experts say.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 requires the US Department of Transportation to make recommendations for how Congress can invest in and increase the resilience of the US marine transportation system.

Carriers, forwarders, and shippers say there will be no pre-Lunar Year bump in rates because they expect US demand to remain weak while exports from China decline further.

Capacity cuts and service realignments could be looming on trades out of India as carriers face an acceleration of recent rate declines.

North Carolina is looking to increase cargo flow at the Port of Wilmington, and recent announcements touting new distribution centers suggest others agree that the potential for growth exists.

The US Federal Maritime Commission is poring over feedback about detention and demurrage billing practices from more than 100 industry stakeholders as the agency seeks to implement a key provision of OSRA-22.

The largest US terminal operator and biggest carrier on US ocean trades are putting their weight behind a mega terminal in New Orleans through a public–private partnership with the state of Louisiana.

Dockworkers at Felixstowe have agreed to pay deals covering this year and next, closing the door on a campaign of industrial action at the UK port that began over the summer.

A growing number of drivers returned to work in recent days amid increasing financial hardship and tougher policing of back-to-work orders by the South Korean government.

CMA CGM said its acquisition of terminal assets in the key New York–New Jersey container gateway was designed around flexibility for shippers, not a bet on permanent shifts in US coastal market share.

New York–New Jersey is CMA CGM’s largest gateway on the US East Coast, and the carrier intends to further develop calls in the New York area for which the newly acquired terminals will provide future capacity.

The head of the union representing East and Gulf coast dockworkers says relations with port employers are strong heading into talks over a new master contract that would begin next year.

As the shipping industry takes stock of the pandemic experience, extended “dwell time” of containers on terminals and the factors that contribute to that are coming under a microscope.

The Ocean Terminal project is part of a larger strategy by the GPA to expand the footprint in Savannah to handle bigger vessels and more containers.

The short-line rail operator for the Port of New Orleans has received a state grant that will fund a new transload facility offering faster access to major highways.

The Port of Houston, citing technology problems, is postponing the start date of a new fee that would penalize shippers who don’t retrieve import containers after the allowable free time.

The US House of Representatives has waded into ongoing rail negotiations, passing a bill to prevent a potential strike and a second resolution that would give workers seven paid sick days.

All supply chains converge at the marine terminal, so facilitating and protecting fluidity through the terminal is the key to unlocking broader supply chain effectiveness, writes JOC’s Peter Tirschwell.

South Korea’s government took the unprecedented step of ordering some of the striking truckers back to work Tuesday, although strike organizer Cargo Solidarity said it would defy the order.

The ability of ocean carriers to manage their growing supply of excess capacity is becoming weaker by the week as supply chain bottlenecks ease and global economic headwinds strengthen.

The South Atlantic Chassis Pool 3.0 has received federal approval and should launch officially in 2023, but it will face a daunting challenge satisfying rising demand as discretionary cargo shifts from the West Coast to East Coast ports.

Newly launched ocean carriers Kalypso and Ellerman are debuting trans-Atlantic services for US shippers that want to bypass the delays and congestion seen over most of 2022.

CMA CGM continued its run of extreme profitability in the third quarter, strengthening its already solid balance sheet and slashing debt levels, but it warned that economic headwinds are strengthening.

If there’s one lesson from the pandemic, it’s that working to ensure efficient container flow through US ports during sustained cargo surges must be the highest priority, whether it’s achievable or not, writes JOC’s Peter Tirschwell.

The cargo surge that began with the COVID-19 recovery in mid-2020 forced US ports to develop a new playbook to cope with the unprecedented port and inland supply chain congestion that resulted, according to APM Terminals.

The Port of Mobile’s breakbulk dockworkers will go ahead with a strike against stevedoring firm CSA Equipment after a month-long cooling period failed to produce a new contract.

Canada’s transport regulator has introduced a new bill that would give the government more authority to monitor port activity and address rail issues faster.

The backlog of empty containers at the Port of New York and New Jersey continues to drop, allowing the port to better handle the increasing volumes of freight being diverted from the West Coast.

Data from visibility provider Portcast shows US exporters struggle to manage changes to early return dates as well as variances in ERD data formats from different terminals.