UK's Peel Ports to Expand Liverpool to Weather Container Slump
Peel Ports, one of Britain's largest port operators, expects to withstand the container shipping slump with a bold project aimed at attracting cargo to Liverpool away from southern gateways, its chief executive said. The container market, which ships retail goods from iPhones to designer clothes and food products, has been hit hard by a slowdown in demand for goods from Asia, especially China. The Baltic exchange's main sea freight index, which gauges the cost of shipping dry bulk commodities such as coal, has fallen to the lowest level since data is available on the China slowdown. Peel Ports, which competes with Associated British Ports…
DMR Sees US Container Terminal Sector M&A Flurry
M&A (Merger & Acquisition) activity in the US container terminal sector is currently at its highest level since the boom time of the mid-2000s. However, whilst the type of buyer is largely similar to what it was, the rationale for pursuing today’s deals is different, considers Drewry Maritime Research (DMR) in their latest 'Container Insight Weekly'. The US container terminal sector has seen numerous high profile deals so far this year.Most of the parties on the buy side of the deals are infrastructure and financial players – the same type of buyers that were most active in acquiring US terminals in the mid-2000s. Their aims and motivations today though are somewhat different to what they were.
