Container lines

Carriers are ready to deploy more mega-ships in the Latin American trades, but ports there may not be prepared to handle them, Juergen Pump, senior vice president of Hamburg Sud North America, told the South Carolina International Trade Conference.

Navios Maritime Holdings has taken delivery of two Panamax vessels for its owned fleet.

Compañía Sud Americana de Vapores has agreed with a consortium of banks to take on $347 million in loans to help pay for the purchase of seven new ships, Reuters reports.

A rocket fired by suspected al-Qaida terrorists at a Cosco Asia container ship as it transited the Suez Canal in August apparently hit a container crammed full of smuggled cigarettes...

U.S. steel imports in August totaled 2.870 million tons, increasing 13.8 percent from July and up 7.3 percent from August 2012, according to government reporting.

Aliança, a subsidiary of Hamburg Süd, has christened the Fernão de Magalhães, the second of four new container ships for the carrier’s cabotage fleet.

Søren Skou, chief executive of Maersk Line, has admitted that the Danish company misjudged the strength in demand for container shipping when it ordered 20 18,000-TEU vessels...

Yang Ming Marine Transport will launch Southeast Asia Service on Sept. 27.

Unifeeder, the north European short sea shipping line, said it has agreed to acquire United Feeder Service to create the largest pan-European feeder operator.

OOCL has entered into a vessel-sharing agreement with Zim Integrated Shipping Services on the Israeli carrier’s independent East Mediterranean Express (EMX) Service, effective this month.

A Mystery Shopper survey jointly produced and funded by the Container Freight Derivatives Association and Seaintel Maritime Analysis suggests that index-linked contracts...

OOCL has leased 50,000 square feet of office space in the RiverPark 7 building in South Jordan, Utah.

Japanese containerized cargo exports will rise 3.0 percent in fiscal 2013, which started on April 1, to 5.176 million 20-foot-equivalent units (TEUs), amid a moderate recovery in the global economy, a Tokyo-based research firm predicted in a new report.

Diana Containerships, through a separate wholly-owned subsidiary, has taken delivery of the Pucon, a 2006-built post-Panamax container ship of about 6,500 20-foot-equivalent capacity.

The trend in global pirate attacks is bringing shippers good news and bad news.

Hapag-Lloyd has recruited Rolf Habben-Jansen, the head of Damco, A.P. Moller-Maersk’s global logistics unit, to succeed Michael Behrendt, CEO of the German ocean carrier.

A Greek shipowner-charterer has taken delivery of the first in a series of 10 ships with capacities of 13,800 20-foot-equivalent units that will be deployed on Evergreen Line services.

Capt. C.J. Wang, chairman of Evergreen Marine Corp., died of illness Sept. 20 at the age of 61, the company said. Evergreen President C.Y. Chang will take over the chairman’s duties temporarily until the board elects a new chairman.

Hapag-Lloyd will launch a Black Sea Feeder service connecting Egypt’s Port Said with ports on the Black Sea and in Israel and Turkey.

China’s exporters could face even more intense pressure from rivals in Asia if the renminbi continues to strengthen, according to one analyst.

Japan’s exports to the United States rose for the eighth straight month in August on a year-on-year basis, surging 20.6 percent to 1.069 trillion yen ($10.8 billion), according to preliminary figures released by the Finance Ministry on Sept. 19.

Farmers, railroad and shipping executives agree that if together they can find a way to efficiently ship grain from the rural interior to seaports, the export of containerized grain products would know no limits.

Maersk Line has plans to increase the price of shipping a 20-foot ocean container from Asia to Europe by $600 in November because current rates are “increasingly unsustainable.”

A prominent trucking industry executive warned that operational changes at rail ramps and other inland locations because of the accelerating exit of ocean carriers from the chassis business are placing added stress on the fragile intermodal drayage industry.

When ocean shippers look at the fourth quarter, they see good news and bad news: It’s good news for them, and bad news for the container lines.

Eimskip, the Icelandic shipping and logistics group, failed in a bid to discover the reasons why antitrust officials carried out a dawn raid on its Reykjavik headquarters last week.

Mediterranean Shipping Co. will challenge Maersk Line as the world’s biggest ocean carrier over the coming four years, as it boasts the biggest order book for new vessels...

Maersk Line has upgraded its Europe-Middle East 3 (ME3) Service linking India, the Middle East and Europe by adding a direct call at Novorossiysk, Russia, effective this month.

Shippers who hoped the advent of big new fuel-efficient container ships would cut their fuel surcharges are being disappointed.

Naval architect Jerome L. Goldman, whose inventions included the barge-carrying LASH ship, died Sept. 5 at his home in New Orleans. He was 89.

Capital Product Partners, a Greece-based tanker owner, has acquired three more container ships for $195 million.

Hapag-Lloyd will begin offering weekly service to Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada.

The volume of agricultural exports, especially those that move in containers, will be higher in the coming year than they were following the drought of 2012, according to agri-business shippers who addressed the South Carolina International Trade Conference this week.

The U.K. private investor group 3i has offered to buy out its fellow owner of Scandlines following the failure to sell one of Europe biggest roll-on, roll-off shipping companies.

Global container shipping capacity is increasing at twice the rate of demand, according to a Drewry director, and this indicates that equilibrium between supply and demand in the major east-west trade lanes will not be reached until 2015 at the earliest.

Zim Integrated Shipping Services is reorganizing the port rotation of its independent Asia-India Subcontinent-East Med Service, known as the AME Service.

FedEx Corp. Founder, Chairman and CEO Frederick W. Smith will deliver the opening keynote address at JOC Group’s TPM 2014 conference next March.

This is the season when Major League Baseball teams watch the scoreboard for updates on the standings. Container lines and shippers are doing the same thing with economic news as they seek clues to future demand.