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The Europe-Middle East-South Asia trade lane stands out as a positive “oasis” in a downcast global container shipping market, according to Drewry Maritime Research.

Lackluster global trade will do air and ocean carriers out of Asia no favors this year as both sectors struggle to balance excess capacity with declining demand.

The Panama Canal Authority is shooting to open its third set of larger locks that can handle post-Panamax ships in May, but it doesn’t expect the larger locks to attract new services for several months.

A seemingly widespread lack of clarity in China surrounding the implementation of the new container weighing requirements does not bode well for the global regulations that will become law in just five months and apply to every container loaded on to a ship.

China Shipping Container Lines has warned investors that it will make a 2015 net loss of $430 million on the back of record low freight rates and vessel impairment losses.

A month-long industrial unrest in Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, spearheaded by some employees at DP World-operated Nhava Sheva International Container Terminal over demands tied to wage increases and better working conditions, was settled over the weekend, allowing restoration of normal operations at India’s biggest container gateway.

Breakbulk shipping has retained a share of the market for U.S. imports of natural rubber, despite a global trend toward use of containers to transport the essential but damage-sensitive industrial commodity.

A Mediterranean Shipping Company container vessel ran aground on the St. Lawrence River Saturday morning between Montreal and Quebec City, according to Canadian authorities.

The owner of a container terminal in Brazil plans to pick the top three bidders in the first week of February and request firm offers after receiving 10 non-binding proposals.

Wind energy equipment has been a rich source of cargo for breakbulk and project cargo carriers, but local and regional sourcing is cutting into international transportation providers’ share of the business.

With the largest mega-ships now carrying up to 19,000 twenty-foot-equivalent units, modern ports need the capability to transport huge volumes of containers in a short period of time to beat congestion and keep shipments moving. This puts strain on existing rail links and increases demand for multiple rail connections and operators to service ports’ hinterland.

Kansas City Southern Railway pulled back its optimism that a new Mexico container terminal would reap new container hauling business, the latest blow to the railroad’s intermodal volume that fell 6 percent year-over-year in the last three months of 2015.

The pending departure of Ports America and its joint-venture partner Terminal Investment Ltd. from Oakland will give the port an opportunity to more efficiently utilize its terminal assets and possibly to re-purpose land for non-container uses, executive director Chris Lytle said Thursday.

The U.S. Coast Guard has reopened a section of the Mississippi River where 22 barges broke loose and hit three ships, including a container vessel, about 50 miles downstream from New Orleans.

U.S eastern railroads, parcel providers and trucking companies are warning shippers that a winter storm with blizzard conditions affecting 18 states will delay shipments Friday and through the weekend.

Some port terminals on the U.S. North Atlantic Coast are revising their operating hours in preparation for Winter Storm Jonas, which is expected to hit the East Coast with heavy snow on Saturday.

After near-unprecedented congestion rocked the Port of Virginia in 2015, the 50-foot-deep port says it’s ready to handle brisk volume growth coming via the larger vessels soon to move through the expanded Panama Canal — and do so efficiently.

Throughput at China’s top container ports expanded in 2015 but figures show a trend of slowing growth amid softer global demand for Chinese-made goods and macroeconomic uncertainty.

The Panama Canal Authority is betting its future on more than a third set of massive new locks that can handle post-Panamax ships and attract more container services. It is counting on construction of a large new container terminal that will serve as a transshipment hub for North and South America and the creation of a new logistics zone along the canal that will attract assembly and light manufacturing activity.

Orient Overseas Container Line reported a sharp drop in container volume and plunging revenue on the Asia-Europe trade in 2015, with a particularly dismal fourth quarter dragging down figures on the oversupplied route.

Two weeks out from Chinese New Year and there is still no evidence of the traditional surge in cargo exports from China before the long holiday, with spot freight rates on Shanghai to North Europe and the Mediterranean declining sharply for the third week running.

International container traffic in the Northwest Seaport Alliance of Seattle and Tacoma increased 8.4 percent in December from December 2014, driven primarily by strong exports.

Sluggish economic conditions derailed Canadian Pacific Railway’s domestic intermodal success, pulling down traffic 9 percent and contributing to a 29 percent profit decline.

J.B. Hunt Transport Services beat both Wall Street and Main Street in the fourth quarter, winning more business and hauling more freight when overall U.S. shipment volumes were dropping.

Union Pacific Railroad said high inventories, a decline in premium shipments and sluggish retail sales are pulling down its intermodal volume and revenue from the hauling of containers.

The Port of Long Beach is guiding more than $4 billion in investments that will keep the second-largest U.S. container port nimble so it can respond to shifts in global manufacturing and trade patterns, pending mergers among ocean carriers and the arrival of the biggest vessels to call in North America, the port’s CEO Jon Slangerup said in his State of the Port address.

The rate of container cargo traffic decline at Russian seaports is slowing but still remains high, with volume plummeting by 25.1 percent in the fourth quarter, according to the Russian Association of Commercial Seaports.

The Philadelphia Regional Port Authority has issued a short list of potential developers of a marine terminal on 196 acres at the former Philadelphia Navy Yard.

Gate operations at Nhava Sheva International Container Terminal, which took a hit due to the abrupt disruption earlier this week, have picked up speed over the past two days, according to the latest update from terminal operator DP World Nhava Sheva.

Container lines are well known for making almost any concession to get or keep a customer, from dropping rates to offering extended free time on terminals, extended use of containers, or late cutoffs at gates. But they will have no room to budge on the requirement that a certified weight based on an actual measurement accompany every container tendered to the carrier as of July 1.

APM Terminals has finalized an agreement to establish a joint venture that will invest over $200 million in upgrading and expanding a container terminal in Cartagena, Colombia’s largest port.

DP World and the Russian Direct Investment Fund today announced the launch of a joint venture that will target investments in ports, transportation and logistics infrastructure in Russia.

When the Panama Canal’s third set of larger locks open to commercial traffic this spring, the massive expansion project will be more than a year and a half behind the original target date of October 2014 and an estimated $150 million over the $5.25 billion budget set 10 years ago.

Global changes in container shipping are confronting the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission with some of the most difficult decisions in its 55-year history. How FMC Chairman Mario Cordero and his four fellow commissioners respond this year and next could determine how the industry deals with carrier consolidation, the increasing influence of vessel-sharing alliances and U.S. port congestion.

International Container Transshipment Terminal, or Vallarpadam, at India’s Port of Cochin expanded its intermodal freight access earlier this week when state-owned Container Corp. of India introduced a weekly train service connecting the DP World facility with Coimbatore, a major southern India inland point.

The number of idled container vessels over 500 twenty-foot equivalent units edged slightly higher in the first two weeks of the year and is set to increase as carriers axe sailings in the run-up to the Chinese New Year holiday, according to Alphaliner.

Greece has accepted a “significantly improved” offer from China’s Cosco Group for the state’s majority stake in the Piraeus Port Authority.

International Container Terminal Services Inc. is expanding its footprint in Africa and the Middle East with two new terminals under development and an eye for more opportunities in the region.

Ma Zehua, the man who replaced Wei Jiafu as chairman and party secretary for China Cosco Holdings in 2013 when the charismatic executive quit unexpectedly, stepped down Thursday as chairman of the mainland’s largest carrier.

This year’s capacity growth will be the lowest ever recorded for the global container shipping fleet, according to Alphaliner, welcome news for an industry already buried under a deluge of excess vessels that cannot be filled.