Port News

The Greek government today officially sold the country’s largest port, Piraeus, to China’s Cosco Group, prompting striking dockers to stage a protest march through downtown Athens.

The Port of Long Beach is studying land use to plan development of the marine terminal capacity needed to handle growing cargo volumes and larger vessels while remaining committed to environmental stewardship and community partnership.

A long-delayed plan for longshore “relief gangs” to replace the Port of New York and New Jersey’s open-ended work shifts is expected to be launched in late 2016 or early 2017, New York Shipping Association President John Nardi said.

A proposed universal chassis pool at the Port of New York and New Jersey is dead in the water, but chassis lessors haven’t given up on the idea, an executive at one of the leasing companies told truckers Thursday.

Senior maritime and transport officials in Ghana identified piracy and corruption as central challenges in the development of an efficient port and supply chain network in West Africa.

Singapore-based carrier Continental Shipping Line has introduced a direct container service between Chennai, India, and Yangon, Myanmar, to capture expected trade growth on the route.

The volume of containers handled by Adani Hazira Container Terminal, a privately-operated alternative gateway on India’s west coast, nearly doubled in fiscal year 2015-16, which ended March 31, driven by new service additions.

Federal investment is expected to fall nearly $130 billion short of the investment in land- and waterside infrastructure ports will make over the next five years, according to a survey of members of the top port lobby in the nation.

Brazil’s passionate Ports Minister Helder Barbalho announced that the recently delayed second tranche of port privatizations valued at more than 2.8 billion reais ($763.3 million) would go forward on June 5 at the Sao Paulo bourse.

A 3.5-magnitude earthquake Wednesday near the Port of Hueneme, California, caused no apparent damage, and cargo handling was proceeding normally, according to spokesperson Will Berg.

The Federal Maritime Commission has scheduled a two-day summit in May to bring together members of the logistics community to develop commercial solutions to port congestion.

The already bleak situation facing the container terminals at Brazil’s port of Santos has become even more dire.

Milaha, the company formally known as Qatar Navigation, has put in a bid to manage the New Hamad Port in Qatar, the first phase of which is due to come online at the end of this year.

The Port of Oakland is using two smartphone applications to improve trucker turn times and address the long visit times at marine terminals that are the bane of harbor trucking companies at many U.S. ports.

German container terminal group Eurogate warned of growing headwinds in the container handling market due to reduced global traffic growth and the forthcoming reshuffle among liner shipping alliances, after it reported increased earnings in 2015.

India’s major ports controlled by the union government recorded a 3 percent year-over-year increase in container throughput in fiscal year 2015-16, which ended March 31, according to the newest provisional port statistics collected by JOC.com.

Intermodal equipment providers are in the early stages of using GPS technology to track their chassis in seaport and inland locations, and if the return on investment is adequate, IEPs anticipate greater use of the technology.

APM Terminals-operated Gateway Terminals India resumed normal vessel operations Tuesday morning after outsourced workers handling rubber-tire gantry crane operations ended a four-day strike that shut down export gates at the terminal and slowed down cargo handling at India's busiest public port complex, Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust.

Ocean containers are piling up at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, threatening to impact normal operations at India’s biggest public port complex, as a stoppage by unionized workers handling rubber-tire gantry crane operations entered its fourth day on Monday.

Labor problems associated with rubber-tire gantry crane operations that had been a key contributor to congestion and bottlenecks at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust last year have resurfaced, hours after JOC.com reported that stable industrial relations are imperative if India’s biggest public container handler intends to cope with the challenges ahead in this era of ever-larger mega ship calls and fierce competition from nearby private ports.

Terminal operators in Los Angeles-Long Beach do not have the infrastructure that would allow them to weigh containers before they are loaded onto ships, so shippers will have to make other arrangements for obtaining the required verified gross mass of the containers before a July 1 international deadline takes effect, the terminals stated late Friday through a spokesperson.

U.S. East and Gulf Coast ports have been winning the market share battle in overall U.S. containerized ocean trade since 2008, and in 2015 they overcame West Coast ports in containerized imports, too.

U.S. West Coast ports in February handled 33.7 percent more laden containers than they did last February, demonstrating a solid recovery from the dark period in early 2015 when labor problems created the worst port congestion in more than a decade.

DP World-operated Nhava Sheva (India) Gateway Terminals at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust on Friday hosted the MSC Cristina, reportedly the largest container ship ever to call Indian shores.

The North American Chassis Pool Cooperative has partnered with Asset Intelligence to deploy a chassis tracking tool designed to improve fleet utilization, enhance billing accuracy and reduce fleet maintenance costs.

All but one of Japan’s five biggest ports posted negative traffic results in 2015 amid growing economic uncertainty both at home and abroad, with only the Port of Kobe weathering the storm well enough to eke out growth.

Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust finished fiscal year 2015-16 with a new record in container lifts even as weaker global demand and other challenges, especially labor flare-ups and landside bottlenecks, hurt the pace of growth at India’s busiest pubic container gateway.

When the CMA CGM Benjamin Franklin pulled out of Los Angeles in late December after an unprecedented effort by the port community to work the largest container ship ever to call at a North American port, no one was prouder than the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

The newly built Bronka seaport plans to end Big Port St. Petersburg’s and Ust-Luga’s dominance of Russia’s Baltic Basin through a flexible pricing policy.

APM Terminals is to invest 758 million euros ($859 million) in Africa’s first automated terminal in the Moroccan transshipment port of Tangier.

The exit of the PMDB party from Brazil’s ruling coalition casts fresh doubt on the ability of the government to adequately dredge the port of Santos in a timely manner as it clears the way for the minister of the Special Ports Ministry, a PMDB member, to leave his post.

Cosco Pacific’s decision to commit more than $1 billion at the beginning of the year to acquire control of the port of Piraeus, once a sleepy and inefficient backwater, is already looking like a winning investment.

HHLA, Hamburg’s leading container handler, has ruled out a recovery in seaborne traffic at its terminals this year following a double-digit decline in 2015 and said it will focus on expansion of its intermodal operations.

The landside bottlenecks plaguing publicly-owned Chennai Port are seen as increasingly benefiting new, privately operated, minor cargo terminals on India’s southeastern coast.

Cosco Pacific Ltd., which has interests in 19 container terminals in China and Hong Kong as well as five overseas terminals, announced a 30.4 percent increase in profit to $382 million boosted by the write back of provisions on the 2013 sale of a stake in China International Marine Containers (Group) Co.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union and Pacific Maritime Association Tuesday entered into formal arbitration over an incident Monday that shut down the largest container terminal in Oakland for one shift.

Container volume at the Port of Wilmington, North Carolina, rose 7.7 percent year-over-year in February after an 8.3 percent increase in January.

The president of an association representing container terminal operators is confident that Brazil will be ready for the Safety of Life at Sea, or SOLAS, Verified Gross Mass rule and has established a Special Technical Group to resolve any final concerns.

United Arab Shipping Co. has appointed TRAC Intermodal as the carrier’s sole chassis provider in the United States. Stuart Sandlin, president of UASC North America, said using a single chassis provider will benefit customers and make UASC more competitive in quoting carrier haulage rates under which the ship line arranges inland transportation.

Busan Port Authority, the operator of the port of Busan, the world’s sixth-largest container port, is planning to invest in overseas port and logistics facilities as a key strategy that will help define the future of the South Korean port.