Container volumes suffer historic fall

Global container volumes fell 1% in August for only the second time in 11 years, according to a report by Macquarie Equities Research. Macquarie analyst Robert Joynson said that the fall was due to a weakening economy and the rise in inventory issues of consumer goods in Europe and the US. August is usually the peak month for containers, with volumes normally around 2% more than July. The previous time that August volumes were worse than July’s was in 2008, when the month-on-month change was minus 0.4%. “Global container traffic was unseasonably weak in August — the first month in 2011 for which this has been the case,” Macquarie said.

The report added that the global container throughput has seen a 5.7% increase year on year in August. Even though the rate is less than the 7.6% rate in May, 7.1% in June, and 7.3% in July, it is still a big achievement, considering the state of the economy. The report added that even though it is difficult to predict the fourth quarter of 2011 due to the state of the economy and the increase in inventories, Macquarie estimates a 4% growth.

Source: Lloyd's List

Asia-Europe rates below $700/TEU as SCFI falls 2.7pc after Golden Week

The Golden Week holiday in China did no favours for the Asia-Europe trade as rates plunged five per cent to US$697 per TEU last week, according to the latest Shanghai Containerised Freight Index (SCFI) data provided by UK-based ship broker GFI Group. Transpacific rates also took a hit during the week following the Chinese holiday with Asia-US west coast rates falling 3.9 per cent to $1,495 per FEU and Asia-US east coast rates slumping 2.6 per cent to $2,976 per FEU. On the Asia-Mediterranean trade, which had up until recently been performing well, rates also fell 3.4 per cent to $971 per TEU.  Across all trades covered by the index the SCFI fell by 2.7 per cent to 947.54 points.

Source: SchedNet

Shanghai Exchange Offers Shippers New Tools

The Shanghai Shipping Exchange’s announcement to introduce risk management tools to help shippers trade derivatives comes as the Federal Maritime Commission considers allowing shippers to use the organization's index to negotiate contracts.

The exchange’s objective is to provide “comprehensive, timely and accurate,” data, SSE President Zhang Ye said Thursday at a press conference hosted by FMC Chairman Richard A. Lidinsky Jr. Zhang said there is growing interest among shippers to trade in rate derivatives to mitigate risk from fluctuating rates. The transactions are popular in Europe, but only five U.S. shippers have entered the market.  The SSE will establish trading platforms in London and Singapore, and the company recently launched platform in China for Chinese carriers, shippers and third parties such as financial institutions.

The exchange also plans to establish a platform for selling vessels that is intended to stabilize the trading market in China. It will include a transaction template that parties can use for conducting transactions.

Source: Journal of Commerce

Evergreen closes $824m loan to finance newbuildings

Evergreen Marine has lined up an $824m 10-year credit with nine Taiwanese banks to pay for a recent flurry of medium-sized ship orders in a deal signed on Friday. The loan will be used to finance Evergreen’s order of 10 8,000 teu ships from Taiwan’s CSBC this May, the first of which is to be delivered in 2013. The total price of the order was $1bn.

Evergreen has been almost unique among major shipping lines for speaking out against the rush to order ships of 10,000 teu and over. Critics have said that the line, which is slipping downward in global league tables, may lose out on the cost advantage of deploying the ultra-large vessels now on order by Maersk Line and regional rivals such as NOL. Evergreen’s chairman Wang Chung-Jinn told Lloyd’s List in August that the cost advantages of the bigger vessels required near-full utilisation, certainly a challenge in the expected rates environment through 2012. He also said that the smaller vessels were far more flexible.

Source: Lloyd's List

Containerized Trade Drops 6.3 Percent at Yokohama

International containerized trade through Japan’s Port of Yokohama declined 6.3 percent in the first half of this year from a year earlier to just less than 1.4 million 20-foot equivalent units, according to preliminary figures released by the Yokohama municipal government. Yokohama, Japan’s second-largest container port after Tokyo, exported 735,740 TEUs of containers between January and June, down 7.6 percent from a year earlier, and imported 662,083 TEUs of containers during the same period, down 4.7 percent.

The municipal government blamed the decline on the catastrophic March 11 earthquake and tsunami that hit the northeastern part of the country.

Yokohama handled 491,608 TEUs of containers in trade with China, its biggest trading partner, in the period, up 6.1 percent from a year earlier. Exports to China totaled 277,557 TEUs, up 5.4 percent, while imports from China of 214,051 TEUs were up 6.9 percent.

Yokohama handled 187,407 TEUs of containers in trade with the U.S., its second-biggest trading partner, between January and June, down 15 percent from a year earlier. Exports to the U.S. totaled 50,194 TEUs, down 19.9 percent, while imports from the U.S. of 137,213 TEUs were down 13.1 percent.

Source: Journal of Commerce

‘K’ Line goes piggyback

‘K’ LINE said today it is expanding intra-Asia box services by chartering slots on existing routes, rather than starting its own. Its box ship strategy chief Fumiyoshi Sato told Fairplay that the liner will charter slots on the China/Indonesia/Philippines CN1 service run by Taiwanese carriers Evergreen and Cheng Lie Navigation, a CMA CGM subsidiary. “Trade between China and Southeast Asia is growing rapidly, and we are seeing more requests from customers to ship goods from Philippines to Indonesia,” Sato explained. “But since this is our first entry into this port pair, we have decided against starting our own service to avoid overcapacity,” he told Fairplay.

Source: FairPlay

Panelists offer clean shipping solutions

Leading industry panelists led a 90 minute round table discussion at the Sustainable Shipping 2011 Conference. The Focus On - Transportation Collaboration workshop brought together members of the transportation sector to meet and explore potential partnership opportunities aimed at reducing emissions and improving efficiency.

Panelist speakers included Raj Sapru from the BSR, Sara Skold from the Clean Shipping Project, Shayne Gregg from Deloitte, Chris Mulder from Capilano Maritime Design Ltd., and Dan Brown from the Environmental Protection Agency who moderated the discussion. The group discussed transparency in the sector and asked panelists when they thought it would be brought in the maritime industry.

Sara Skold of the Clean Shipping Project said that progress is already happening. "When we first started the Clean Shipping Index, no shipping companies would work with us, now we have over 1006 vessels in our database sharing their data," she said. The Clean Shipping Index ranks vessels or shipping companies according to the most relevant issue such as emissions to air and water, use of chemicals and antifouling  and let's cargo owners seek shipping companies with the best environmental performance.

Adding to the transparency issue, Shayne Gregg from Deloitte said that public and stakeholder pressure would drive transparency to the industry.

The group also discussed whether they thought the International Maritime Organization (IMO) is the correct body to be regulating ship emissions. While they agreed that the IMO has its place a governing body over the shipping industry, many agreed with Raj Sapru from BSR that changing the supply chain would be a more poweful way to reduce emissions. "The shipping industry should work with the supply chain on reducing emissions as the production and movement of goods are driving that. Regulations are slow and changing the supply chain would immediately see the reductions of emissions," said Sapru.

Chris Mulder from Capilano Maritime Design Ltd. said educating the public on the shipping industry is needed in order for them to understand the environmental problems within the maritime industry. "Once the public understands what the problem is, change can happen very quickly." The group agreed that having consumers engage with companies would be a cost-effective and easy way to figure out problems within the sector and would be an effective way of driving positive environmental change.

While problems within the shipping sector were discussed including issues relating to regulations, technology and credibility and public image, the workshop still had a positive forecast on the future of environmental shipping.

Source: Sustainable Shipping