Container Shipping Giant News

German container shipping giant Hapag-Lloyd on Monday welcomed into its fleet the “Berlin Express”, the first ship of its new Hamburg Express class. At an event attended by some 300 guests from business and politics, naming patron Elke Büdenbender performed the ceremonial christening of the ship at the Container Terminal Burchardkai (Athabaskakai) in the Port of Hamburg. Among the guests were Peter Tschentscher, the First Mayor of Hamburg, and Daniel Günther, the Minister President…

Groups representing major retailers and manufacturers urged the White House on Monday to intervene in contentious West Coast port labor negotiations, citing worries about shipping disruptions during critical holiday shopping seasons.The call came after the largest terminal at Southern California's Port of Long Beach closed on Monday as dock workers rally for better pay. Monday's closure followed similar disruptions on Friday in Oakland, California.More than 22,000 dockworkers…

Container shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk said on Tuesday it had stopped taking new bookings of goods for Sudan due to the ongoing clashes in the country.Maersk is monitoring the situation and looking for solutions to stabilise its supply chain services there, the Danish shipping company added."These current circumstances mean that we have stopped taking new bookings for now until the situation improves," Maersk said in a statement commenting on the situation in Sudan.(Reuters - Reporting by Essi Lehto, editing by Terje Solsvik)

Container shipping giant A.P. Moller - Maersk said it has teamed up with National Meteorological Service of Germany, Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD) to install automated weather stations enabling a portion of its fleet to transmit live data to help forecast weather and climate.In the largest project of its kind, A.P. Moller - Maersk (Maersk) has installed automated weather stations (AWS) on 50 of its vessels creating a pulsating oceanic web of weather and climate observations. All collected data is transmitted live to the National Meteorological Service of Germany…

The CEO of container shipping giant MSC highlighted the importance of working together to achieve net decarbonization in a digital keynote speech at DNV’s ‘Fuel of the Future Conference’ on January 11, as part of the annual Nor-Shipping convention.In his speech, Soren Toft explained MSC’s views on the status of decarbonization in the container shipping sector, summarized how the company is approaching this challenge and commented on how everyone must move forward together in collaboration to tackle climate change.As shipping volumes have grown over the years…

Container shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk now plans to achieve net zero emissions in its business by 2040, a decade earlier than previously announced, on the back of rising customer demand for green transportation and technical leaps.With about 90% of world trade transported by sea, global shipping accounts for nearly 3% of the world's CO2 emissions, and the sector is under growing scrutiny to become cleaner."When we set the target back in 2018, it was truly a moon shot target…

Container shipping giant Maersk on Wednesday agreed to buy Hong Kong-based LF Logistics for $3.6 billion in an all-cash deal, as it seeks to expand beyond its core ocean freight business.The deal is one of the group's largest takeovers to date and follows a series of acquisitions including e-commerce firms, a freight forwarder specializing in air freight and its smaller rival Hamburg Sud."The acquisition will further strengthen Maersk's capabilities as an integrated container logistics company…

German container shipping line Hapag-Lloyd on Thursday reported a nearly 10-fold increase in first-half net profit, citing surging freight rates amid scarce transport capacities.The group, the world's number five in the industry, said net profit climbed to 2.7 billion euros ($3.28 billion) from 285 million euros a year earlier.It said it did not expect any normalization in global supply chains which have seen severe infrastructure bottlenecks due to the coronavirus crisis."We are naturally pleased by this extraordinary financial result," said chief executive Rolf Habben Jansen."But the bottlen

Maersk is accelerating its plan to transform itself from a container shipping giant into an integrated logistics company following its strong performance during the pandemic, Chief Executive Soren Skou said on Tuesday.Maersk, which handles one in five containers shipped worldwide, aims to expand its land-based logistics services, hoping to gain a larger share of the supply chain from existing shipping clients such as Puma and Walmart."I don't want to put a date to it, but I'm certain that our logistics business has potential to become just a big as ocean shipping measured in turnover…

MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company is introducing the electronic bill of lading (eBL) for its customers globally following a successful pilot phase of the independent blockchain platform.The eBL enables shippers and other supply chain stakeholders to receive and transmit the bill of lading document electronically, without any change or disruption to day-to-day business operations, potentially saving the industry billions of dollars, the Swiss-headquartered container shipping giant…

Container shipping giant MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company doubled down on its position to avoid sending its vessels through the Northern Sea Route and urged others to follow suit, citing environmental concerns.“As a responsible company, this was an obvious decision for us,” said MSC CEO, Soren Toft. “MSC will not seek to cut through the melting ice of the Arctic to find a new route for commercial shipping, and I consider this a position the whole shipping industry must adopt.”Running from Murmansk near Russia’s border with Norway to the Bering Strait near Alaska…

With historically high freight rates, fleet utilization and demand, there is no end in sight for the red-hot containership market.Container shipping giant Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen candidly said “nobody saw this coming” as “we’ve seen a spending shift from services to goods”, with consumer spending for household products and goods soaring during the pandemic, as funds usually targeted to travel, eating out and events has been diverted to home improvements, medical supplied and fitness equipment…

Container shipping giant Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) said it is working to advance the exploration viability of hydrogen and fuels derived from it as potentially viable fuel sources for its vessels.The initiative is part of the Swiss-Italian shipping line’s wider approach to decarbonization which has already seen the company pioneer the use of biofuels as a blended marine fuel, and on Tuesday MSC said it joined the Hydrogen Council, an industry body, to help drive R&D…

Container shipping giant Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) counts biofuels and hydrogen-based fuels among options worth studying to potentially help the shipping industry meet decarbonization targets, one of the company's executive told an industry conference in Switzerland on Monday.“There’s no one single solution to decarbonize shipping. We need a range of alternative fuels at scale and we need them urgently,” said Bud Darr, MSC Group's Executive Vice President, Maritime Policy & Government Affairs…

French container shipping giant  CMA CGM plans to sell selected port terminals, ships and other assets to raise roughly $2 billion to finance its acquisition of CEVA Logistics, according to Reuters.Chinese state-owned conglomerate China Merchants Port has entered into a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with CMA CGM to acquire interests in a portfolio of 10 terminals from the French container line and its affiliates via Terminal Link for a total consideration of $955 million.As part of the deal, China Merchants Port will buy as much as $468 million of convertible bonds issued by the joint venture, Terminal Link, and will loan as much as $500 million to CMA CGM.CMA CGM is also raising about $860 million from a ship sale and lease-back deal.

South Korea’s container shipping giant Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM) and compatriot shipbuilder Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME) have joined forces on the research, development and innovation in the field of smart ship technologies.Under a Memorandum of Understanding, the parties would conduct research on real-time service system based on IoT (Internet of Things), design on-shore platforms for optimized fleet operation, develop automated warehousing systems for ship materials and development economic navigation solutions.HMM plans to promote the innovation of smart ship technologies underway of directly reflecting and testing operational data to its own container vessels.In fact, certain part of smart ship solution related to optimized ship operation has already been compl

Manufacturer of mobile satellite communications KVH Industries informed that the container shipping giant Seaspan  completed the implementation of KVH mini-VSAT Broadband connectivity for all 107 managed vessels in its global container ship fleet.Seaspan selected KVH’s TracPhone V7-HTS/AgilePlans and KVH’s TracPhone V11-IP for the vessels.“We chose KVH for the ability to have a superior end-to-end solution from one provider, which can be customized as per our business requirements” says Rajesh Gopinathan, manager of process improvement for Seaspan.Rajesh added: “KVH, working together with our IT department, were able to complete 60 installations in less than 12 months…

Container shipping giant Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) has secured a USD 439 million financing to fit 86 exhaust gas cleaning system (EGCS) or scrubbers  to its fleet.BNP Paribas (BNPP) was the co-ordinating bank and agent on the agreement, together with a syndicate of four other banks as lenders, said the law company Watson Farley & Williams (WFW).The SINOSURE-backed loan would be used to finance the manufacturing and installation of the scrubbers on board 86 container ships owned by the MSC group in light of the implementation of the International Maritime Organisation’s low sulphur cap regulations in 2020.The WFW Paris team advising BNPP was led by Finance Partner Alexia Russell, supported by Associates Konstantina Kyprianidou and Parit Patani.WFW Paris were assisted by Alasdair

German container shipping giant Hapag-Lloyd said on Monday it is preparing customers for a mechanism to charge more for cleaner fuel starting next year to comply with tighter environmental rules.The Hamburg-based firm said on Monday that it has developed what it will call a marine fuel recovery mechanism (MFR), which it will gradually introduce from Jan.

Germany's Kühne Logistics University (KLU) and the container shipping giant Hapag-Lloyd announced the launch of the Hapag-Lloyd Center for Shipping and Global Logistics (CSGL) in Hamburg.According to the University, in Hamburg CSGL will promote the ongoing discourse between international research and the shipping industry.Thomas Strothotte, PhD, President of the KLU said:  “We are combining theory with practice, and are building upon KLU’s key competence areas digital transformation, creating value, and sustainability.”Karl Gernandt, Chairman of the Supervisory Board at KLU and Executive Chairman of Kü̈hne Holding AG, emphasized the crucial role of the news center for the industry.

Danish container shipping giant Maersk Line has followed in the footsteps of its counterparts CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd and joined the New York Shipping Exchange (NYSHEX) as its founding member. Along with Hapag Lloyd, CMA CGM, MOL, OOCL, and COSCO, Maersk Line will begin posting digital contract offers for the Transpacific Westbound trade on the exchange as early as March of this year. "This marks a significant milestone for us as we now have added six of the top global ocean carriers as members in the last nine months," says a statement from NYSHEX. These carrier members represent a combined 52% of global capacity (source: Alphaliner) and all three of the alliances: 2M, Ocean Alliance and THE Alliance.

French container shipping giant CMA CGM has set up a new global startup incubator to drive its digital strategy. Based in Marseilles, France, the incubator Ze Box is set to house a dozen of startups from around the world, starting in June this year. Located in Le Castel building, it will cover a surface of 800m² and will house, starting June 2018, a dozen of startups coming from all around the world to develop their potential. A call for applications will be launched shortly. The creation of Ze Box is part of CMA CGM’s strategy to make digitalization one of the pillars of its development. This innovation will accelerate, complete and strengthen the initiatives that have already been launched by the Group within the past months.

As in 2016, Germany and Greece top the list of country dumpers in 2017, according to new data released today by the NGO Shipbreaking Platform. German owners, including banks and ship funds, beached 50 vessels out of a total of 53 sold for demolition. Greek owners were responsible for the highest absolute number of ships sold to South Asian shipbreaking yards in 2017: 51 ships in total. Since the Platform’s first compilation of data in 2009, Greek shipping companies have unceasingly topped the list of owners that opt for dirty and dangerous shipbreaking. Despite increased pressure for safe and clean ship recycling from Norwegian investors and authorities, in 2017, the number of Norwegian-owned ships scrapped on the beach was on the rise: 18 ended up in Alang, Gadani and Chittagong.