Container lines

Freight rates at record low levels dragged down Maersk Line's first-quarter net profit.

The U.S. Federal Maritime Commission is levying the collective experience of the private sector to fight congestion at U.S ports.

Pacific International Lines is looking beyond today’s bleak business climate and is aiming to make a splash later this month.

Trans-Atlantic spot rates are forecast to rise.

The world’s major ship owners are feeling the pressure as container ship charter rates plummet and charters are being renegotiated as the financial positions of shipping lines worsen, according to Drewry.

Maersk Line is poised to disclose its first-quarter results after a bruising three months.

Hanjin Shipping and Hyundai Merchant Marine have confirmed they are in discussions with other container lines on forming alliances.

Hanjin Shipping has reached out to ship charterers to request their patience and understanding as it tries to restructure its debt.

After three straight weeks of decline, the spot rate for shipping a 40-foot-equivalent unit container from Shanghai to the West Coast shot up this week.

Hermann Yu, president of the Taiwanese container line Yang Ming Marine Transport, died at home on April 27, the company has announced. He was 59.

The U.S. Coast Guard Thursday gave its stamp of approval to two alternative methods for obtaining certified container weights to comply with new international regulations.

CMA CGM, the third-largest global container line, got the go-ahead on Friday from the European Union to acquire Neptune Orient Lines, the parent company of APL, but with one condition.

Spot freight rates on the Shanghai-North Europe and Asia Mediterranean trades shot up this week.

Technology is playing an increasing role in the management of freight rates.

Long-awaited guidelines on how China will implement the SOLAS container weight rule have been released.

The Port of Houston has announced how it will handle the SOLAS verified gross mass rule.

Japan’s three largest container lines mostly reported dismal financial results for fiscal 2015 on Thursday.

A big new container shipping alliance aimed at blunting the power of a partnership between the world’s two largest ocean carriers and promising to shake up the other major vessel-sharing agreements will not set sail until it passes muster with global regulators.

The Port of Charleston and its CEO James Newsome are emerging as mavericks in the increasingly heated debate over a global container weight rule.

The decline in global piracy continued into the first quarter, but attacks are rising in some parts of the world.

CMA CGM has introduced a new container to corner the live lobster market.

Could U.S. freight volumes rise and overall economic growth slow?

The struggles of South Korea's largest container lines have created a new top shipowner in the country.

Standard & Poor’s has placed Hapag-Lloyd on negative credit watch.

The new Ocean Alliance will have the largest market shares of critical east-west trades.

The fleet of idled container ships has shrunk slightly as several large vessels laid-up have returned to service, according to Alphaliner.

The CKYHE Alliance members have announced that they will stick together a while longer.

The voyage data recorder from the El Faro, which sank on Oct. 1 in the Bahamas, killing its 33-member crew, was located early Tuesday morning — a development that lately had seemed unlikely to happen because the equipment’s batteries were believed to have expired.

Container ships and the industry have come a long way since the days of the Ideal X and the birth of modern containerization. The biggest initial hurdles to containerization were making the concept work.

The cutoff time for a shipper submitting the verified gross mass information to a carrier will likely be before the general cutoff time being currently applied, according to a CargoSmart study on the new SOLAS rule that will be implemented from July 1.

U.S. agriculture exporters’ push for a so-called “rational” method to a new container-weighing rule suffered a blow after APL said in a guidance to shippers that it wouldn't allow customers to provide the weight of goods and packaging to the container line, which would then add that figure to the tare weight of the container.

As this year’s brutal service contracting season in the eastbound trans-Pacific wound down in mid-April, a frustrated carrier executive said customers were pounding him mercilessly for extended free storage time for containers at the ports, 15 days of free time for containers and chassis at their warehouses and record low freight rates. “It’s crazy out there,” the executive said.

The Port of Charleston says it is in the final stages of tests to see whether the port can provide in-terminal container weighing services for shippers to comply with the new International Maritime Organization container weight rule that goes into effect this July.

Betting on the troubled container shipping industry probably makes more sense than investing in it, and a bookmaker would be salivating at the permutations available to the eight shipping lines “orphaned” by the Ocean Alliance that was formed last week.

Spot rates in the eastbound trans-Pacific eroded this week in the interim period of lackluster import volumes that will continue for the coming month or so until traffic picks up in the summer-fall peak-shipping season.

Hanjin Shipping wants its main creditor, the Korea Development Bank, to take over management of the company to restructure its debts and streamline its operations.

Orient Overseas Container Line’s revenue slumped 17.1 percent in the first quarter even as traffic increased 4.2 percent, highlighting the plunge in ocean freight rates to historic lows that is accelerating consolidation moves across the beleaguered industry.

There was little movement among spot rates on the Asia-North Europe and Asia-Mediterranean trades this week as carriers prepare for the May 1 general rate increases they hope will offer some relief.

The majority of shippers and logistics providers in a CargoSmart survey had no plans to comply with the new container weight rule that will be in effect from July 1, and Drewry found that none of 20 NVOs the analyst met during an April tender process were ready to comply.

Federal Maritime Chairman Mario Cordero expects the U.S. container shipping industry to be prepared for the SOLAS container weight rule that takes effect July 1.