Seaboard Marine has launched a new weekly service from New Orleans, connecting U.S. exporters to Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica, in addition to Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

Time charter rates in the smaller chemical tanker vessel sizes are expected to remain stable over the next two years, but rates for the larger sizes, especially medium range (MR) vessels, will decline due to the impact of falling clean petroleum products (CPP) freight rates, according to the latest edition of the Chemical Forecaster, published by global shipping consultancy Drewry.

The largest public companies in the U.S. chose to go even further into debt in 2015 instead of driving cash out of their businesses by improving how they collect from customers, pay suppliers and manage inventory, according to the annual working capital survey from REL, a division of The Hackett Group Inc. Overall working capital performance continued to degrade, reaching poorest performance levels since the 2008 financial crisis.