Latest news

Swedish furniture maker IKEA has decided it will make Incheon port its primary South Korean gateway after it began testing out Incheon New Port Phase 1-1 container pier (Terminal B) in July.

Russian containerized rail companies are cutting their fleets this year and plan to do the same next year, as the country’s trade suffers from Western sanctions and the low price of oil.

The imminent suspension of several liner services between Asia and the U.S. East Coast and South America during the slack shipping season threatens to put as many as 50 Panamax container ships out of work by January, according to Alphaliner.

Recent harsh winters, equipment shortages and longshore labor disruptions have taught beneficial cargo owners that supply chain plans of the past are inadequate in today’s unpredictable transportation environment if they do not include risk assessment and management.

Hutchison Ports Australia (HPA) and the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) today agreed to extend conciliation talks until November as both sides try to find a way out of a bitter dispute that exploded after 97 workers were fired in early August.

The container shipping industry is facing three more years of overcapacity and financial pain because of slowing global trade and a bloated order book of large vessels, forcing Drewry to slash its growth forecast for 2015 and revise down estimates for future years.

Container line APL has launched a weekly service connecting North Asia markets with the U.S. West Coast using U.S.-flagged vessels in a speedy transit that will be controlled by the carrier from end-to-end, including the rail link to inland destinations.

Those in the U.S. surface transportation sector can buckle up for more of the same, so long as the national economy continues to creep along at its current pace.

The labor dispute that clogged West Coast ports with containers for months is still shaping freight markets, speakers at the JOC Inland Distribution Conference say, months after a contract was signed and the freight logjam broke.

FedEx founder, CEO and Chairman Fred Smith expects some of the cargo diverted from congested West Coast ports to remain moving through other entry points as shippers diversify their supply chains.

Hyundai Merchant Marine said it will spin off its dry bulk division and its two U.S. West Coast container terminals as the Korean company seeks to bolster liquidity at its core container shipping business.

Panama Canal Administrator Jorge Quijano has assured shipping leaders that the canal’s new, larger locks should open on schedule by April, despite concerns that the opening would be delayed by leaks in one of the locks’ concrete sills.

The Coast Guard said its search for the 33 persons aboard the cargo ship El Faro would be halted at 7 p.m. EDT Wednesday, more than six days after the TOTE Maritime cargo ship sank off the Bahamas during Hurricane Joaquin.

A Trailer Bridge triple-deck barge broke loose from the tug that was towing it from San Juan to Jacksonville, Florida, last weekend during the same hurricane that claimed TOTE Maritime’s El Faro.

Three former “K” Line and NYK executives have been indicted for alleged participation in a scheme to rig bids and fix prices for international shipments of roll-on, roll-off shipments to and from the United States.

Roadrunner Transportation Systems is expanding in Canada after having recently made a number of moves to increase its service in Mexico.

The privatization of the port of Piraeus has been delayed as Greece’s snap general election Sept. 20 interrupted preparations by government transport and finance officials.

The volume handled at India’s major public ports grew a meager 2 percent in the first fiscal half amid sluggish global trade demand and growing service bottlenecks at some of the country’s main container gateways, particularly Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust.

China’s economic slowdown is not putting the brakes on foreign logistics property developers that have in the past month signed new leases for more than 4 million square feet in cities across the mainland.

A developer is adding more than half a million square feet of speculative industrial space at BNSF Railway’s Logistics Park Kansas City.

The shortage of truck drivers has expanded by 10,000 since last year, and is on track to quadruple to 175,000 by 2024, according to a report released Tuesday.

Four out of five ships operated by the world’s 20 largest container lines arrived in port on time in August, the best performance since November 2013, SeaIntel Maritime Analysis said in its Global Liner Performance report.

Orbcomm, a technology company with a focus on asset tracking, has purchased WAM Technologies as it seeks to bolster its maritime presence.

Searchers are combing the Atlantic today in the fast-dwindling hope of finding survivors among the 33-member crew of the TOTE Maritime cargo ship El Faro, which sank five days ago during a Category 4 hurricane off the Bahamas.

The oldest container terminal in Rotterdam, ECT City Terminal, has closed after nearly fifty years, because it can’t handle the ever-larger vessels calling at Europe’s top container port.

HHLA, Hamburg’s leading terminal operator, has downgraded its 2015 earnings forecast in response to declining traffic at Germany’s top container port.

Indian Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari said the government plans to spend roughly Rs. 70,000 crore (approximately $10.7 billion) on upgrades for major public ports under the “Sagar Mala” project over the next five years.

Container volumes handled by West Coast ports are returning to historical levels, but the weekly manpower requirements for handling the containers is about 15 percent higher than in the past. That suggests terminal operators are struggling to adjust to the complexities caused by mega-ships, vessel-sharing alliances and chassis shortages.

Container volumes at Panama’s ports totalled just over 4 million 20-foot-equivalent units during the first seven months of this year, up by 4.4 percent from the same period last year.

China’s slowdown is causing jitters at the highest business levels with excitement over a deal reached on the Trans-Pacific Partnership tempered by the World Bank cutting its growth forecast for Asia-Pacific on concerns over the mainland’s weakening economic performance.

U.S. lawmakers may have avoided a government shutdown last week, but the temporary funding bill that bought Congress 10 more weeks has left important port construction projects and ports’ access to federal grants in peril, according to the top U.S. port lobby.

As the Port of New York and New Jersey tries to reduce chronically long lines for the 86 percent of its containers that move by truck, there are growing cries to extend gate hours. But there’s a problem — many distribution centers aren’t open late to receive the cargo.

The Louisiana Chemical Association has filed suit to block raises for two groups of Mississippi River ship pilots that would boost their average annual pay more than $50,000 over four years, to $473,692 in 2019, according to a local report.

The Panama Canal Authority is not only focused on expanding the waterway itself, but also on synergistic ancillary ventures that render the entire system more attractive.

The fast-growing port of Tauranga has begun widening and deepening its shipping channels to handle larger vessels after a more than four-year court battle over the project.

All but one of Japan’s five biggest ports saw their international container traffic shrink in the first half of this year amid growing economic uncertainty both at home and abroad.

A body of one crew member of the TOTE Maritime cargo ship El Faro has been found, the Coast Guard said, and the search continues for the remainder of the 33-member crew of the vessel, which sank during Hurricane Joaquin.

Santos Brasil by 2047 plans to invest $324.4 million to allow the Tecon Santos terminal to handle larger ships and boost capacity by one-fifth after South America’s biggest container terminal operator received a 25-year concession extension at the busiest container gateway in Latin America.

TNT Express said its third-quarter operating profit will be “materially lower” than last year due to economic volatility in China, Brazil and Australia.

Poste Italiane, Italy’s state-owned postal company is expected to start selling shares in its initial public offering next week and make its debut on the Milan stock exchange at the end of October or early November.