Tag: containerships

Companies seek less riskier routes to negotiate better rates Shipping companies continue to bear the burden of increasing war-risk insurance premiums as their fleets pass through trouble spots, industry insiders said at the Gulf Maritime exhibition yesterday.Amid escalating tensions with Iran over UN-imposed sanctions, shipping companies are seeking less risky routes such as Khor Fakkan that could allow them to negotiate cheaper insurance rates."It is a problem for shipping lines because they are responsible for shipping containers. If they import to the port of Khor Fakkan they won't be charged too much because it is outside the Straits of Hormuz," said Ali Al Fat'hi, senior commercial executive of Gulftainer.Increased shipping costs may mean higher commodity prices for consumers in the region, given that about 90 per cent of the world's cargo is moved by ships, said Dr Mohammad Abdul Rahim, Regional Manager of Europe and Africa at ClassNK, a ship classification company."Trade with the region keeps on growing, so they need more ships. Though they suffer, they have no choice. They have to pay premiums and pass them on to the end-consumer," he said.Electronic goods and basic commodity prices such as grains may see a slight increase in prices, he ...

Norwegian Groups Sign New Agreement as Energy Sector Takes Treatments on Board Ballast water is a bête noir of the shipping industry with bulk freight and container vessels particularly affected with their need to constantly adjust draft and balance as they load and offload cargoes around the globe. The damage caused by alien organisms has tragically been illustrated too many times and the potential for harm has made the topic high on the agenda of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) as well as other regulatory bodies around the world. In 2009 the US authoritiesbegan banning certain ships and fining owners millions of dollars for careless actions.Species invasion can decimate an entire aquatic environment and these days any such pollution is not only unacceptable but completely avoidable with the new technologies available to combat the problem. By 2016 every vessel on the globe which carries ballast water will need to have adequate ballast water treatment (BWT) systems aboard and functioning.Astudy last year in the Great Lakes for example showed eleven species ofbryozoan statoblasts, innocuous looking creatures that filter water to feed. This represents an astonishing 12% of all the types of these creatures known yet many simply shouldn't be there and ...

IAPH joins with WSC, ICS and BIMCO The International Association of Ports and Harbors (IAPH) has joined with the World Shipping Council (WSC), the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), and BIMCO in the effort to encourage the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to amend the Safety of Life at Sea Convention (SOLAS) to require, as a condition for stowing a loaded container on board a ship, that the ship and the port facility have a verified actual weight of the container. All four organizations have consultative status at the IMO.The announcement comes as the IMO's Dangerous Goods, Solid Cargoes and Containers (DSC) subcommittee, which is responsible for improving the safety of container stowage and ships operations, continues its efforts to construct a SOLAS requirement that loaded export containers have a verified weight prior to vessel loading. As instructed by the IMO's Maritime Safety Committee (MSC), DSC will consider such a requirement at its next session in September 2012 (DSC 17)."Weighing containers to confirm their actual weight is the right operational and safety practice. There is substantial experience with such a requirement in the United States demonstrating that this is feasible on a technological and commercial basis. It is time to make ...

Changes of Schedules on Four Continents After the recent news that CMA CGM and MSC will be working more closely together to maximise efficiency of freight services the two giant container shipping lines have confirmed adjustments to their schedules whilst Maersk, Hamburg Süd, CSAV and CSCL have also seen Winter season restructuring.In an effort to balance supply and demand during the forthcoming traditional period of weaker demand, Hamburg Süd and Maersk Line on the one hand and CMA-CGM, CSAV and CSCL on the other, have reached an agreement to adjust their services between Asia, South Africa and the East Coast of South America as from this month until next May.Each Group is currently operating two weekly services in the trade. For the period from December 2011 through May 2012, the existing ASAS/NGX Sling 2 service will be merged with the existing ASAX/SEAS Sling 2 service. The current capacity deployed by the carriers in the ASAS/NGX Sling 1 service (Maersk and Hamburg Süd ) and ASAX/SEAS Sling 1 service (CMA CGM, CSAV, CSCL) will remain unchanged and independent. This means the ASAX/SEAS 1 which currently utilises eleven 6,500 TEU vessels will now have the same number of smaller ships each between ...

MV RENA Updates Salvors on board the crane barge Smit Borneo hope to this afternoon begin removing containers from the Rena, weather and other conditions permitting.The 110 metre crane barge departed Port of Tauranga early yesterday morning, and salvors spent the day securing the vessel on the port side of the Rena. This involved the placement of mooring lines and four massive anchors, at the end of about 800m of anchor chain, to secure the barge next to the Rena.Maritime New Zealand (MNZ) Salvage Unit Manager Arthur Jobard said the barge was currently moored about 300m off Rena. It would use winches to extend and retract its four anchor chains to move the vessel to access containers from different parts of the ship as needed.Mr Jobard said salvors planned to begin testing the barge's cranes and other systems today, starting with the removal of lighter, empty containers, before beginning work on the heavier containers."The focus today will be on testing and refining the process for removing containers, starting with those that are empty before moving onto more difficult containers. As always, these operations are highly complex and are heavily dependent on the weather and technical factors. However, all going well, ...

Sluggish demand and rising costs will take their toll next year, claims analyst Container shipping will need further consolidation to cope with sluggish demand and sustained high vessel-operating costs, an independent analyst has warned the industry.In his latest quarterly Macro Report, consultant Philippe Hoehlinger says: "Most macro-economic indicators have turned orange or even red, which is not expected to change before the second quarter of 2012."The report looks at a basket of macroeconomic variables relating to cargo trade growth and load factors and concludes that the latest figures provide "a deteriorating picture in demand".Writing before the announcement of the strategic alliance between container lines MSC and CMA CGM, Hoehlinger said: "Market analysts currently bet on industry consolidation in the near future to stop the bleeding and reduce costs."The report estimates that freight rates on transpacific and Europe-Asia trades are 20-30% lower than they were a year ago, with new vessel capacity on those trades creating a "fierce market-share war".The report also expects the gap between available vessel capacity and ships in use to reach 1.4 million teu in the first half of 2012 - 9% of the total available fleet - with the containership orderbook expected to remain at around ...

Won't be able to push higher rates if they don't fully decomission shi Ocean carriers need to start fully decommissioning vessels if they want to succeed in pushing through rate hikes in the New Year, said a Macquarie Capital Securities analyst.Alphaliner said there was less than 1 percent increase in idled vessels in mid-November, while the proportion of the total idled fleet was just 2.9 percent. Most of these vessels were 'hot' layups, meaning they still had a small crew on board and were ready to re-enter the market at short notice. A 'cold' layup involves dismissing the vessel's crew and shutting down the ship's electronics."We have recently spoken with many of the carriers in our coverage, and at this point none are planning cold layups, just warm layups," said Janet Lewis, MCS' regional head of industrials and shipping research. "All carriers fear loss of market share if they commit to cold layups."Layup overhead costs are significantly reduced by removing the crew, but machinery and electronic systems can degrade and reactivation can take weeks and usually involves a dry dock.With trans-Pacific rates at their lowest level in 23 months and rates even worse on the Asia-Europe lane, Lewis said she ...

MV RENA Updates Container removal from the stricken ship Rena off the coast of Tauranga is proceeding well - but the removal operation continues to be weather dependent, Maritime New Zealand's National On Scene Commander Rob Service said.A total of 165 containers have been removed so far, with 20 removed today (as at 4.00pm).Mr Service warned that removing containers would become progressively more difficult, and the operation would need to stop during periods of high winds and swells, which were being constantly monitored.He said it was always a concern about how long the operation would take, but it had to be done safely, and each stack of containers had to be individually managed.Low-level beach cleaning activities were continuing at Mt Maunganui, Maketu, Matakana and Motiti islands today, and at Papamoa beach where oil had resurfaced. Oil that had been deposited on the beach is likely to be covered and uncovered by normal coastal processes for some time, he said.However the amount of oil was not significant and, overall, the amount of oil being discovered was decreasing.Meanwhile a wildlife response team captured and examined 80 penguins last night on Rabbit Island but found no oiled birds. Thirteen of those captured were ...

Many container carriers have been losing money Global container ship operators, hammered by high costs, oversupply and flagging demand, are cutting shipping capacity to shore up freight rates depressed by a sluggish global economy.Many container carriers have been losing money since the third quarter as freight rates fell sharply, mainly due to a supply glut, industry experts said at a regional logistics and maritime conference here on Friday.The Shanghai Shipping Exchange's China Containerised Freight Composite Index fell about 12 percent this year to 923.7 on Friday. Freight rates on the China-Europe route have tumbled about 35 percent.The shipping industry is a barometer for the global economy as it accounts for more than 80 percent of international trade volume.Maersk Line, a unit of Danish shipping and oil group AP Moller-Maersk AS and the world's largest container ship operator by volume, is considering idling some of its ships, especially those on Asia-Europe routes."We are looking to see whether we should take some ships out of the Asia-Europe route," said Tim Smith, chief executive of Maersk Line's North Asia division.Maersk Line posted a loss for the third quarter and said it expected to stay in the red for the whole of this year."I ...

Gains come despite U.S., European economic uncertainties Box throughput at leading Asian gateways grew in October despite the economic uncertainties that plague key European and U.S. markets.Throughput at Hong Kong's container terminals rose 8.1 percent year-over-year to 2 million 20-foot equivalent units last month. Traffic at the terminals rose 5.7 percent from September.Container throughput at the transshipment port in the first 10 months of the year was 20.3 TEUs, up 3.6 percent on the same period of 2010, according to figures from the Hong Kong Marine Department.Regional transshipment rival Singapore saw October container throughput rise by more than 7 percent year-over-year to 2.6 millions TEUs. Traffic last month was 8.3 percent higher than in September this year, said Singapore Maritime and Port Authority.The port of Chongqing, located in China's booming interior, saw volume at its river piers rise by 13.8 percent in the first three quarters of the year to 188,000 TEUs. The port of Haikou, in China's southern island province of Hainan, reported that in the first ten months it had handled 610,000 TEU, almost equal to the annual total recorded in 2010.The port of Lianyungang in Jiangsu also saw volumes climb in the first 10 months of this ...