Freight Exchange

Carib Freight Rates Soar

Freight rates for Caribbean clean cargoes leapt to nearly W400 on Wednesday from W335 at the start of the week, brokers said. "There's a shortage of Boston-suitable tonnage, and a lot of cargoes - it's as simple as that," said one U.S. broker. But other sources point to the thriving gasoline arbitrage between Northern Europe and the U.S. Northeast as sucking in all available ships, thereby tightening supply in the Caribbean. The rise in freight cannot be pinned down to any one fixture. "Owners quoted a little bit more than last done, then a little bit more, until we got where we are today," said the broker. "I expect it'll stay up for the next two weeks," he said, adding "Christmas is coming and charterers will want to fix until beyond then." The Baltic Exchange in London last night quoted the route at W370, a rise of nearly 38 points from the day before.

Drewry to Launch World Container Index

Drewry Shipping Consultants and The Cleartrade Exchange have announced that the World Container Index (WCI), the first Europe-based assessment of container freight rates and index production, is scheduled for launch in September 2011. The index will provide a new and important facility for the global market to hedge their freight rate risk and see major improvements in forward price discovery through the container derivatives market.

Marks & Spencer Signs Contract with Drewry

Marks & Spencer joined other multinationals from North America, Asia and Europe which have found in Drewry’s 150 sets of port region-to-port region container freight rates a valuable source of pricing benchmarks to help their transport procurement decisions. Due to the launch of the global container freight rate benchmarks and associated regional and global freight rate indices, Drewry is making the unique, industry-first freight rate data available on-line to subscribers at www

Caribbean Tanker Rates Up a Notch

Caribbean tanker rates edged up a notch on Monday because of ongoing backlogs caused by last week’s weather delays, brokers said. “We saw W305 done today for 70,000 tons,” said a U.S. broker. “The fog has lifted but there’s still a backlog. Some ships are running... five to seven days late.” He said that lightering programs had also been affected. London brokers said that rates for million-barrel tankers continued to hold firm

U.S. DOT Chief LaHood Establishes Freight Advisory Committee

DOT Announces Proposal to Establish ‘National Freight Network’.   U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has announced the establishment of a National Freight Advisory Committee to provide recommendations aimed at improving the national freight transportation system. A strong freight transportation system is critical to the nation’s economy and essential for helping meet President Obama’s goal of doubling U.S. exports by 2015

BOURBON Releases 1Q Results

BOURBON's first quarter 2006 revenues totaled $219m, an increase of 21.5% compared with the same period in 2005 (14.7 % at constant exchange rates). In its Offshore Division, BOURBON saw revenues of $101m at the end of March 2006, up 32.9 % . The offshore oil and gas marine services recorded very strong growth, except in the North Sea. The Towage & Salvage Division reported revenue growth of 18.5% in the first quarter of 2006 against the backdrop of a strong market

Panamax Rates Hold Strong

Freight rates for Panamaxes trading the Atlantic are holding strong but the Pacific market is now starting to weaken, shipbrokers said. "Prospects for May in the Atlantic are very good as South American business is expected to accelerate," said a shipbroker, adding that the strength in the Atlantic Panamax market was likely to continue into next month. South America's grain export season started later than expected this year and should therefore produce further opportunities for the Panamax

Cargill To Deliver Low Sulfur Cargo

Cargill Inc. is in the process of shipping the first low-sulfur gas oil or diesel cargo from Southeast Asia to Europe. Traders said the company had chartered a tanker called the Young Lady, which is on its maiden clean products voyage, to lift a total of 680,000 barrels of gas oil from the Malacca II refinery in June. The Malaysian refinery is the only major refinery in Southeast Asia that can produce high-quality diesel that meets tight United States CARB and European EN590 specifications

NOL Shares Down 6.8 Percent

Shares of Neptune Orient Lines Ltd (NOL) slumped as much as 6.8 percent on Monday morning after it said it expects to book a profit for the full year but that the results would be much lower than the previous year. The world's sixth largest container ship operator fell to a 17-month low of S$1.08 before crawling back to S$1.11, down $0.05 in moderate trade of more than two million shares. The Singapore Exchange had suspended the stock after its president and CEO Flemming Jacobs warned of

Port of LA is Top Gateway

The Port of Los Angeles became the top U.S. international freight gateway by shipment value in 2003, according to a soon to be released report from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics. America’s Freight Transportation Gateways shows that Los Angeles’ water port handled $17 billion in export trade and $105 billion in imports, totaling $122 billion in business handled by the port.