Six global forwarders will ultimately determine the rates paid to airlines by Unicef for vaccine distribution. Yesterday, 16 airlines announced they had signed MoUs with Unicef to support its global vaccination plan. The agreements, which last five years, do not include pricing, according to the UN children’s organisation. “Pricing is outside the scope of...
The 2M alliance has announced a further blank sailing this week from Asia to North Europe to use the vessel on another service. The last-minute cancellation of the sailing of the 19,224 teu MSC Erica from Shanghai on 21 February is surprising, given that the ship is due at the port at 4am on Sunday...
A new superport is set to be created in north-west Europe after the Belgian ports of Antwerp and Zeebrugge announced today that they will formally merge. Talks between the municipal authorities of Antwerp and Bruges began in 2018 and unification will put the superport within touching distance of nearby rival, Europe’s largest container hub, Rotterdam. Last year, the two ports handled 13.8m (Antwerp, 12m teu, and...
Shippers are resigned to the probability that container spot freight rates from Asia will remain at their current high levels for some time after Chinese New Year. Today’s beginning of the Chinese lunar new year would usually herald several weeks of downward pressure on freight rates, but so far there are no indications...
High levels of congestion at major container gateways have led to declining direct port calls by mainline Asia-North Europe vessels, and increased the likelihood that the UK could become a feeder market. Over the past few months, the ranks of deepsea vessels omitting direct calls and unloading UK-bound cargo at north-west continental Europe gateways have swelled,...
Chinese express giant SF Holding is to acquire a 51.8% stake in Hong Kong’s Kerry Logistics Network – a landmark $2.3bn deal creating the “biggest logistics group in Asia”. In a filing to the Shenzhen stock exchange late last night, SF Holding, which operates courier firm SF Express, said the move would...
Sources have indicated that ECU Worldwide is currently undergoing a cyber attack. The company has not officially confirmed the nature of the problem, but one staff member told The Loadstar that all the systems are down. “It’s global, and it’s been problematic for a couple of days. None of us can connect,”...
Shippers face many more months of inflated freight rates, as ocean carriers show no sign of easing their strategy of keeping capacity tight and favouring high-paying spot cargo. In a customer Q&A session this morning, Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen said the carrier was still “flooded with bookings”. He said: “It will be...
Extra loaders deployed by transpacific carriers to meet booming import demand have overwhelmed the US gateways of Los Angeles and Long Beach. According to a survey by Alphaliner, the capacity of the 27 ships berthed and 41 at anchorage at the San Pedro Bay ports stood at a massive 579,100 teu on Monday. The consultant calculated that the 41 ships...
Global container service scheduled reliability has declined to its lowest levels since records began, according to new data from SeaIntelligence Consulting. The analyst’s latest schedule reliability data for December shows just 44.6% of vessels arriving on time, “which means that for the fifth consecutive month, global schedule reliability has been the lowest...
