Tag: shipping industry

According to Moore Stephens shipping confidence reduced slightly in the three months to end-November 2018. Namely, the average confidence level expressed by respondents was 6.0 out of of 10.0, in comparison to the 6.3 recorded in August 2018.

Navis expects that the biggest trends that will characterize the industry over the next year will include increased IT spending, more collaboration and data standardization, trade wars, smart containers, automation productivity gains, and improved carrier capacity management and environmental efficiencies.

Despite facing several challenges, commercial ships are becoming more and more connected, but also the workforce onboard them are being digital natives potentially trained on new technologies. This article is an overview of the shift from manual to digital systems and processes, a shift into ... systems, driven by the aforesaid challenges.

Australian livestock exporters have written to Western Australian sheep producers, advising of a new three-month moratorium in sheep shipments to the Middle East during the Northern Hemisphere summer. The moratorium, to take effect from 1 June 2019, will mean no shipments of Australian sheep will depart any Australian port for the Middle East during the highest heat stress risk period of the northern summer.

US and China reached an agreement to pause their trade war and come up with a deal to give a boost in decreasing global growth. Commenting on the agreement, President Trump called it a bis steps forward for the US-China relations.

There is no doubt that many times hazardous situations surround the organizations’ operations, increasing the risk for a catastrophic failure during their day to day operation. A High Reliability Organization operates in such a manner that error rate is low, despite the difficulties and risky operations.

Mrs Elizabeth Mavropoulou, Charity Administrator and Programme Manager at Human Rights at Sea, addresses the issue of maritime human rights, referring to the many actions undertaken by the “Human Rights at Sea", a registered UK Charity, which aims to bring the topic to the table.

‘Safe maritime operations under extreme conditions: the Arctic’ is a research project that is developing an innovative and integrated risk-based approach to safe Arctic navigation, ship design and operation. SEDNA has a global consortium, with 13 partners from 6 different countries, including China. It has already been launched since June 2017 and it is expected to be completed in May 2020.

Marine shipping activity and residual fuel oil demand were supported by US importers who were building inventory ahead of the holiday season. This activity was also supported by efforts to deal with escalating tariffs from the trade war between USA and China. However, marine shipping was slow in October, while the Baltic Dry Index was less by 5.5% between September and October.

The UK’s Ministry of Defence has launched a report, presenting the threats that climate change poses both for the shipping industry and trade routes. Namely, the report says that shipping will be among the sector that will be hit the hardest by climate change, as trade routes could be disrupted due to extreme weather.