Drone ships may be the next generation of shipping. Rolls Royce recently launched a $7.2m autonomous ship project intended to pave the way for drone vessels.

Just one year after its announcement, Egypt's expanded Suez Canal is open for business. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi led the inauguration ceremony, which was attended by several Middle Eastern and European world leaders. The publicly-funded expansion cost about $8.5bn.

Crowley Maritime Corporation's Caribbean logistics unit has recently been granted reclassification of its Puerto Rico warehousing and distribution center to Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) status.

The latest issue of Drewry's Container Insight Weekly includes an analysis of how a Suez Canal closure would affect the container industry. Were social unrest in Egypt to disrupt shipping through the waterway, Drewry's concludes that there are enough vessels to move goods around Africa.

Shipbuilding production levels have remained at record high levels, exceeding 50 million compensated gross tons (cgt) for two consecutive years (2010 -2011), with 2012 forecasted to remain close to 2011 levels, according to Drewry Maritime Research. However, the orderbook that forms the contracted forward workload has diminished rapidly and tails off to very low levels for 2014 and beyond.