Maritime

Singapore has opened two new phases of its $2.6 billion Pasir Panjiang Terminal, another step along a massive development road that will help the port cope with mega-ships and alliance complexities continuing to frustrate transshipment hubs in the region.

The Ocean Three Alliance has taken the unprecedented step of withdrawing one of its Asia-Europe strings at the start of the peak season that will take 12,000 TEUs out of service, according to Alphaliner.

The general slowdown in China’s container exports was supported by the latest manufacturing data that shows weak factory activity being recorded in the mainland for the fourth consecutive month.

With longshore unions on both coasts moving aggressively to enforce chassis inspection requirements, the American Trucking Associations wants the Federal Maritime Commission and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to immediately put an end to inspections it says are creating costly delays for drayage truck drivers.

APM Terminals is transferring its lease at Houston’s Barbours Cut terminal to the port authority, which will market the 80-acre site to other users.

Rates on major east-west container routes are “in free fall” and likely to remain depressed by supply-demand imbalances for at least two more years, according to analysts at Drewry Supply Chain Advisors.

Hapag Lloyd is adding the port call of Ashdod, Israel, to its service connecting the country with Turkey and said it will begin calling on Iskenderun, Turkey in late July through an unspecified service.

The new head of MOL Line said its container line will cooperate more with its nine terminals in order to boost profitability after losses from its liner business deepened to 9.5 billion yen ($76.6 million) last fiscal year.

The new locks at the Pacific end of the Panama Canal began to fill with water this week in preparation for months of testing of their new gates before they open to commercial traffic in April 2016.

A strike by employees of MyFerryLink has closed Port of Calais, snarling trucks seeking to use ferry services to cross the English Channel, according to the BBC.

The damage inflicted by months of West Coast port congestion and supply chain delays lingers even now, more than a month after management and labor ratified a new longshore contract on May 22. Trans-Pacific volumes at West Coast ports have returned to normal levels, but the ports and carriers that call them lost market share in the first five months of 2015. The only winners were non-vessel-operating common carriers and East Coast ports.

Container trailer groups in the Nhava Sheva port complex issued a trade notice suspending drayage operations to and from APM Terminals-run Gateway Terminals India, effective Tuesday, sparking another round of congestion woes for shippers and carriers using India’s largest box gateway, also known as Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust.

Shippers on the over supplied Asia-Europe trade appear to be honoring their service contracts with container lines even as the spot market tumbles to new lows every week.

If Hong Kong was added to a table of China’s top 20 container ports, it would slot in at number four both in terms of cumulative throughput this year and in May volumes, according to the Shanghai Shipping Exchange.

Owner-operator drivers in New Orleans protested truck turn times and construction delays at the Napoleon Avenue Container Terminal, but port officials said the demonstration did not affect operations.

CaroTrans is launching a new weekly, direct less-than-container-load service from Milan to Charleston starting next month, amid weak westbound volume growth on the trade lane.

The G6 Alliance is seeking to pick up additional cargo in a weak market by extending one of its Asia-Europe routes to include the Baltic Sea port of Gdansk, Poland, and has revised a separate loop to include a stop at Port Said, Egypt.

An Indian-flagged cargo vessel carrying containers sank in the early morning hours of Monday about 40 nautical miles off the Mumbai coast, according to Indian maritime agencies.

A slew of U.S. shippers and supply chain stakeholders Monday threw their support behind new legislation aimed at providing Congress with a database of port performance metrics in order to avoid a repeat of the crippling West Coast longshore labor negotiations earlier this year.

A West Coast terminal operator that suffered through three years of International Longshore and Warehouse Union work slowdowns at the Port of Portland is promoting legislation that would make maritime labor slowdowns illegal.

Analysis of more than 125,000 port calls in 2014 ranked six ports in China and two ports from the United Arab Emirates among the Top 10 for the year.

Most attacks on ships in Southeast Asian waters are armed robbery, not piracy, the Singapore Shipping Association says.

Container terminals in Hong Kong have joined Maersk Line in calling for the territory’s government to address competition law concerns that threaten to make the liner business illegal from next year.

DP World will use automated cargo-handling at a container port it plans to open this year at Yarimca, Turkey, on the Sea of Marmara near Istanbul. The terminal, DP World’s first in Turkey, will have capacity of 1.3 million 20-foot-equivalent units a year.

Chilean ports have been hit by a series of brief strikes by port workers protesting terms of a labor reform approved last week by the lower chamber of the nation’s congress.

Japanese carrier NYK said it expects a weaker yen, low fuel costs and cost-cutting to provide it with higher container shipping profit despite low rates this year.

Shippers face a two-pronged threat of strikes at Brazil’s Port of Santos, the largest in South America.

The recent plunge in spot rates for trans-Pacific container shipments doesn’t reflect what cargo interests will pay as a result of recently negotiated service contracts with carriers for the coming year.

Preliminary studies for the proposed Jasper Ocean Terminal on the Georgia-South Carolina border will continue during the next fiscal year with $2.5 million in funding from the states’ port authorities.

China has fined 21 container carriers a total of RMB 4.25 million ($684,000) for providing customers in the China-Japan trade with rates below officially quoted levels.

When it comes to piracy, carriers must balance the speeds and routes their vessels take with crew safety and delivering maximum efficiency to clients.

Critics of the five-year contract ratified in May by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the Pacific Maritime Association say the benefits were weighted heavily in favor of the union, but PMA President Jim McKenna says that wasn’t the case at all.

Crowley Maritime will add a roundtrip monthly sailing between the Philadelphia area and San Juan, Puerto Rico, to meet demand in a tight southbound market.

Evergreen Line will order 20 new vessels, each with capacity for 3,000 20-foot-equivalent units, Vice Group Chairman Bronson Hsieh said at a shareholders’ meeting Wednesday.

Global economic uncertainty and a slowing China continues to hang over cargo markets, with air and ocean transportation providers struggling to match capacity to demand while having little visibility going into the second half of 2015.

Far from being out of sync with the global market, the mega-ships that are being deployed today are a natural evolution of the growth in global demand, according to an executive of one of the largest container ship chartering companies.

Asia-Europe freight rates are now 82 percent lower than at the same time last year, dropping by 15.6 percent this week to settle at the latest record low of $205 per 20-foot container, according to the latest reading of the Shanghai Containerised Freight Index.

A U.S. trade group representing public port authorities Thursday voiced caution over new legislation aimed at providing Congress with a database of port performance metrics in order to avoid a repeat of the crippling West Coast longshore labor negotiations earlier this year.

U.S, European and Chinese maritime regulators on Thursday agreed to work together to keep a sharper eye on massive shipping alliances.

Maersk Line and Mediterranean Shipping Co. will add a Panama Canal service in July from China and Korea to four U.S. South Atlantic ports to handle rising U.S import volume to the fastest-growing region.