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The significant decline in Russia’s container traffic as a result of sanctions and an ongoing economic crisis is transforming not only the routes that cargo in Russia takes, but also the underlying dynamics of the country’s shipping business.

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.

Nordana Project and Chartering, which owns and operates about 25 breakbulk and heavy-lift multipurpose tweendeck vessels, has named Rickmers-Linie as its representative in China.

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 government of Ukraine is struggling to replace transshipment container traffic that has been lost to the country’s ongoing economic crisis caused by its civil war and Russian sanctions.

Norfolk Southern Railway has set a date for its annual shareholders meeting, setting the stage for a showdown with Canadian Pacific Railway, its longtime suitor that has been pursuing a merger with NS for nearly five months.

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.

Amazon has already taken a first step in Germany to reduce its reliance on established logistics companies, cutting the ribbon on a parcel sorting center outside Munich late last year. In Munich, Amazon also is using more than 200 delivery vans operated by a subcontractor to offer last-mile delivery to customers.

In the past few months, Amazon has moved openly and aggressively to increase its reach, capabilities and capacity in the logistics and distribution arena. The Seattle-based company purchased thousands of trailers blazoned with Amazon logos in the U.S., registered as a non-vessel-operating common carrier to better manage the flow of goods from China to the U.S. and leased 20 U.S. domestic cargo planes from Air Transport Services Group.

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.

Project cargoes are becoming more important to ports and carriers on the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway amid forecasts of continued weakness in bulk shipments.

Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, which has now moved into an era of mega-ship calls on the back of a deeper channel, is inching toward a new record in container lifts during the current fiscal year, which ends March 31.

Hapag-Lloyd must become bigger to compete with the leading container lines in a fast-consolidating market, the German carrier’s largest individual shareholder said.

The world’s largest container maker, state-owned China International Marine Containers, reported tumbling net profit for 2015 as revenue declined sharply across the group's transport, logistics and energy segments.

Container lines are unlikely to go under despite freight rates falling to historical lows and zero freight being offered on some routes out of Asia, with governments and creditors expected to step in and salvage failing carriers, believes Drewry.

In the nearly nine years since the Oct. 31, 2007, inauguration of container shipping services through Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Cosco has been the dominant carrier to the port that offers the fastest transit from Asia to the U.S. Midwest.

Spot rates on the Asia-Europe trade recovered slightly after matching record lows and reports of zero freight began to circulate.

Hyundai Merchant Marine is selling its stake in the Busan New Port in an effort to stave off bankruptcy ahead of this year’s maturation of debts valued at 382 billion South Korean won ($334 million) with another 606 billion won due in 2017.

Agility Logistics net profit for the fourth quarter of 2015 rose 5 percent year-over-year to 14 million Kuwaiti dinars, or $46.4 million, in spite of a weaker performance from its cornerstone logistics division, the company said in a statement Monday.

Eastbound trans-Pacific spot rates slipped 2 percent to a new low of $748 for a 40-foot container bound for the U.S. West Coast from Shanghai, as carriers and beneficial cargo owners negotiate contracts for the coming year.

The application programming interface, long the means of connecting software and hardware, may be about to digitally rewire transportation networks.

Roll-on, roll-off operator Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics is best known for its fleet of pure car and truck carriers and has owners with deep shipowning roots, but the company’s fastest-growing business is on land.

A pact between India and Bangladesh to streamline and bolster coastal shipping operations between the two countries is beginning to bear fruit with the first departure of a container ship under those guidelines from Krishnapatnam, India, on Monday.

Moscow’s share of overland transshipment traffic fell to 35 percent in 2015 from its typical figure of 75 percent, according to Russia’s Ministry of Transport, as the country’s overland logistics network reorients itself away from the country’s capital toward China and the Asia Pacific.

Brazil meat exporters had a week of both good and bad news as they seek new markets in Latin America to capitalize on the depreciation of the local currency, the real, which has recently buoyed the country’s beef exports.

With the 2008-09 economic recession and the labor problems of 2014-15 behind them, West Coast ports see 2016 as the year they will return to their normal annual growth trend of about 5 percent.

Waberer's International increased revenue to 522.5 million euros last year, but Europe's refugee crisis, coupled with a Russian embargo, made moving truckloads across borders more difficult.

News that the International Atomic Energy Agency had verified Iran’s compliance with requirements to curtail its nuclear program raised the hopes of project shippers eager to help restore Iranian infrastructure and energy production. But most companies will have to wait a while — and the wait may be longest for U.S. companies, which are likely to be stuck in line behind their European Union counterparts.

Japan’s government on Friday acquired a majority 50 percent stake in the company operating the ports of Yokohama and Kawasaki for 500 million yen ($4.4 million), allowing the terminal operator to jack up its capital investment.

Operators of multipurpose vessels are catching it from all sides. Slumping oil prices are causing cancellations of energy projects, and there’s increasingly stiff competition from container ships, roll-on, roll-off vessels and bulk carriers.

Once dominated by paper documentation and the Excel spreadsheet, invoicing and freight payment is on a relentless march toward electronic data interchange as a new group of autonomous startups and large 3PLs enter the business.

Nepal will be given access to China’s Bohai Rim port of Tianjin in an agreement signed in Beijing this week, allowing the landlocked mountain republic to break its near total dependence on trade routes through India.

An on-going analysis of the factors that contribute to marine terminal congestion has industry experts concluding that ports will probably have to implement at least a half-dozen measures in order to relieve what has become one of the biggest bottlenecks in goods movement.

Most small trucking operations do not have electronic logging devices or any type of on-board computer, and don’t plan to purchase and install them until a December 2017 deadline draws closer, a survey of 1,300 trucking operators found.

Los Angeles-based startup Cargomatic has named two logistics veterans, one from Coyote and another from CEVA logistics, to its leadership team.