The shipping industry is poised to emerge from its longest downturn in three decades, buoyed by an end to years of overcapacity that have depressed freight rates since the end of a shipping boom in 2008.
NGO Shipbreaking Platform, a global coalition of organizations seeking to prevent dirty and dangerous shipbreaking practices worldwide, has published the complete list of ships that were dismantled around in the world in 2013. Of the 1213 large ocean-going vessels that were scrapped in 2013, 645 were sold to substandard beaching facilities in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, says the group. Approximately 40 per cent of these ships were EU-owned.
The CMA CGM Group is launching a space-sharing agreement with container-carrying partners Maersk Line, APL and OOCL on three services from the Far East to the Indian Subcontinent, starting in February of 2014.
INTTRA, the multi-carrier e-commerce network for ocean shipping, announced a strategic agreement with CSAV Group, one of the largest shipping companies in Latin America, to make INTTRA a preferred e-shipping platform for CSAV Group's customer base of shippers and freight forwarders.
Cuba on Monday inaugurated a $957m port billed as the most modern in Latin America and crucial to the economic future of the communist-ruled island in a project financed by Brazil and equipped for ships passing through an expanded Panama Canal.
A bitter dispute between the Panama Canal and a Spanish-led consortium of construction companies over the spiraling cost of expanding one of the world's busiest waterways was years in the making.
The Stifel Logistics Confidence Index entered 2014 on a positive note. Despite a month-to-month 0.9 point decline in the overall Index reading to 56.6, the Logistics Confidence Index has remained above the 50-level for 12 months, meaning the market continues to exhibit a healthy confidence in air and sea freight forwarding. To get a better view of global air and ocean trade, Stifel has partnered with Transport Intelligence to create the Stifel Logistics Confidence Index (LCI), a monthly survey of international shippers and forwarders that measures freight activity across several European-based trade lanes.
Ocean container import and export activity for the U.S. ended on a strong note in 2013, with imports soaring 17.7 percent and exports rising 5.7 percent from November. Both upticks are seasonally expected, but the import volume was especially stronger than normal.
