Container lines

If there was ever a year when the outlook for reliability in the system was more clouded, 2019 and into 2020 would take the prize.

The United Kingdom is scheduled to leave the European Union on March 29 but is struggling to reach a deal on trade that would limit disruption.

"With the holiday season behind us, the immediate pressure to stock up on merchandise has passed, but retailers remain concerned about tariffs and their impact on the nation’s economy,” said Jonathan Gold, the NRF’s vice president for supply chain and customs policy.

Shippers are concerned that they will pay for service consolidation.

Shippers can expect a far more aggressive approach to matching vessel supply with demand.

Fissures have appeared, ranging from member frustration in standards-setting organizations to deeper concerns about the viability of the technology in the container shipping space.

Carriers among the other two alliances are expected to announce their own blanking programs.

Increasing use of the available capacity in both directions and the impact of service shifts in 2018 could mean shippers find it more difficult to find carrier space for containers this year.

Spot rates in the eastbound Pacific increased for the second straight week.

When imports increased strongly last summer, due in part to front-loading of shipments to get ahead of the Trump administration’s tariffs on China, spot rates soared by more than $1,000 to each coast.

Shortages in rail equipment, as well as dry and refrigerated containers, are increasing pressure on exporter operations.

Here are a few certainties shippers and their transportation providers can bank on for 2019.

The surcharges and rate increases are coming in hot as 2019 gets under way, with carriers trying to keep prices up into the Lunar New Year peak.

“There are all these wonderful use cases for sensors — container security, optimization, insurance."

ONE has cemented its Asia headquarters in Singapore and will gain greater control of its volume in a joint venture terminal deal in the Lion City.

After a year of dismal schedule reliability, carriers have revised their networks in an attempt to improve service levels, but standing in the way are significant challenges.

Providers such as Advent and GE Transportation are each constructing a system of systems at North American ports.

Eastbound trans-Pacific spot rates fell for the fourth straight week.

It's the latest sign of an ocean carrier strategy of trying to cut costs by pushing shippers to secure slots digitally.

Among other findings, the McKinsey report provided further evidence supporting the thesis that automation technology incorporation in container shipping, and in particular at marine terminals, will likely be part science and part art.

There is almost assuredly no one system that will solve inefficiencies, especially in a large port complex with a dozen independently operated terminals like Southern California, speakers at the JOC Port Performance North American Conference in Newark, New Jersey, said this week.

Wan Hai hopes to attract business/volume under India's liberalized cabotage system.

Two variables shippers will have to determine that will likely influence the instant quote practice’s acceptance/rejection are — will the shipper's business model benefit from an instant quote and an immediate booking? And how much of a premium are shippers willing to pay to obtain them?

CMA CGM (India) said the smart container was loaded onto the CMA CGM Tosca at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust on Nov. 30, destined for Marseilles, France.

After four straight months of declining demand growth on the westbound Asia-Europe trade, container volume has started to increase.

The Federal Maritime Commission stopped short of any regulatory action on detention and demurrage. Instead, a task force would meet to “refine commercially viable demurrage and detention approaches.” There were several findings, however, which validated cargo owner concerns and provide reasons to be optimistic that teams of stakeholders will be able to find resolutions.

The new tools provide peace of mind for a segment of shippers who want web-based booking tools, and also offer a path to value/service differentiation for ocean carriers. But what happens to the value proposition of NVOs and their decades-long relationships and nuanced, specialized services?

The European Commission said that several EU member states and EU shipbuilding associations have complained about carriers in Asia receiving state subsidies.

HMM is trying to reverse a loss trend that most recently saw it post a $147 million net loss in the third quarter, which it blamed on high fuel prices.

The challenge of taking blockchain pilots and proofs of concepts to wide-scale adoption is that the latter requires a broad adoption from a range of parties. But with a smart contract, that requirement is much smaller.

After Argentina's implementation of market-friendly policies, trade officials hope that the nation has bottomed, concerning trade volumes, after a decade of stagnation.

CMA CGM is the first carrier to participate on the marketplace hosted by Freightos, a technology startup that until now only provided aggregated rates to forwarders.

Container shipping is at a key point in its pursuit of carbon neutrality, and Maersk wants industry help in cleaning up the business.

Ocean carriers will have even more reason to show trans-Pacific capacity discipline, if Sea-Intelligence’s demand forecast proves to be accurate; however, a current container shipping trend may make that doubly hard.

Tyler Smith, director of Viant, a blockchain-based supply chain modeling software company, said consortia have not proven their value, so far, but hopefully they will. He added that consortia are a way to get people involved.

There are still more unknowns than knowns about the US-China tariff ‘truce,’ but this is clear: the extra time until March 1 helps shippers by giving them a longer time cushion before higher tariffs could potentially start.

Maersk Line will stop at the port of Montreal only, and no longer the port of Halifax, on its route linking Canada to Europe, to speed up transit times.

Following a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Buenos Aires on Saturday at the G20 summit, President Trump agreed to a 90-day truce in which the US wouldn’t impose higher tariffs on Jan 1. as threatened.

The cuts come even amid reports of Brazilian coffee and cotton exporters scrambling for outbound capacity out of the ports of Santos and Vitoria.

Alphaliner offered telling data on ocean carrier third-quarter operating margins compared with a year ago, and despite higher shipping demand and revenue, the margins are a source of concern.