Container Ship Operator News

Container ship operator Euroseas said Tuesday it had agreed to buy  M/V Seaspan Manila and M/V Seaspan Melbourne intermediate size container vessels with a capacity of 4,250 TEU each, built in 2007 and 2005, respectively.The vessels are being acquired for a combined price of $37 million. Euroseas will also assume the existing charter arrangements of the vessels. Both acquisitions will be initially financed with the company’s own funds.Aristides Pittas, Chairman and CEO of Euroseas said:"We are pleased to announce the acquisition of M/V Seaspan Manila and M/V Seaspan Melbourne, two intermediate containerships built in 2007 and 2005, respectively, along with their existing approximately two years and three quarters long charters.

Wärtsilä will supply its Fixed Pitch Propeller (FPP) and EnergoProFin solutions for two container vessels owned by Yang Ming Lines, the Taiwan-based shipping company, to help the container ship operator maximize efficiency in slow steaming mode.The Wärtsilä solution is designed to enable this adjustment, allowing the speed of the two vessels to be reduced from 24 to 18 knots.The two vessels, the ‘YM Mobility’ and the ‘YM Milestone’, are the last in a series of four Yang Ming ships to be retrofitted with the Wärtsilä FPP and EnergoProFin solutions.

Singapore-based container ship operator Pacific International Lines Pte (PIL) has agreed with most of its financial lenders to defer debt payments and is in talks with a unit of Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings for a potential investment.PIL said in a statement on Tuesday that it had made significant progress in cutting asset costs due to the challenges the sector has been facing but the coronavirus pandemic had made matters worse over the past month.“Due to the situation, the company had commenced discussions with 15 of its financial lenders with a view to concluding a formal agreement concerning a debt-reprofiling plan with these stakeholders…

Shares of Neptune Orient Lines (NOL) - now a wholly owned unit of French container ship operator CMA CGM - delisted from the Singapore Exchange (SGX) with effect from 9am September 07. CMA CGM said in a press release on Monday (Sep 5) that NOL had obtained the necessary waivers and approval from SGX for the delisting, which will take effect at 9am on Tuesday. CMA CGM has completed the exercise of its rights of compulsory acquisition of all NOL shares held by shareholders who did not accept the all-cash voluntary conditional general offer. The takeover has marked CMA CGM’s biggest ever acquisition and came as container lines sought to cope with a severe market downturn through greater scale.

Israeli carrier Zim Integrated Shipping Services (ZIM) might join the 2M Alliance between Maersk Line and Mediterranean Shipping Co., Alphaline said quoting industry sources. This news followed the last week's news of South Korea’s Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM), currently a member of the G6 Alliance, that it was in negotiations to join the 2M partnership. 2M alliance currently consists of Maersk Line and Mediterranean Shipping Company S.A. (MSC). Zim has a 3.3 percent share in the trans-Pacific route, Alphaliner said and that would be good synergy for 2M. Zim is the only major global container ship operator that has not officially joined any of the existing alliances or the new groupings that will begin next year.

Rickmers Maritime, which is affiliated to the Hamburg-based Rickmers Group,  slumped to a $129.2 million loss in 2015 from a $16 million profit a year earlier on increased write offs on the value of its ships and depressed container charter rates. The Container ship operator's charter revenue from its fleet of 16 container ships shrank by 17 percent to $108.5 million from $130.3 million last time. The bulk of the full-year loss was in the fourth quarter when the deficit widened to $129.6 million from $16 million last time, due mainly to an impairment charge of $128.4 million. This took the impairment bill for the full year to $148 million against $63 million in 2014.

Maersk Line, the world's largest container ship operator, said on Wednesday it was consolidating operations in Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay to cut costs amid falling freight rates. Maersk Line, part of Denmark's Maersk Group, said shipping volumes should not be affected by its decision to put operations in four different countries under one director. "We will maintain capacity and offer a more consistent frequency," Antonio Dominguez, the new director of operations for the east coast of South America, told Reuters. Maersk Line expects demand for container shipping to remain weak in 2016, with growth of 1 percent to 3 percent, due to ample offer. Latin America accounted for around 12 percent of Maersk Line's global volumes in 2015.

The world's biggest container-ship operator Maersk Line  has confirmed market talk that it has temporarily idled one of its largest vessels - yet another sign that the industry is in dire straits, says a report in the The Straits Times. Triple E mega-ship  Morten Maersk - among the largest globally with a capacity of 18,000 standard containers - plys the Asia to North Europe route, calling at Singapore along the way. The ship has been idle in the East China Sea off Shanghai since mid- October, owing to the Chinese Golden Week holiday, said the Copenhagen-based company. But it is expected to resume service in Busan, South Korea, next month. The Danish conglomerate has been canceling or delaying orders for new vessels after years weathering a sharp downturn in the container-shipping market.

CMA CGM Group will work with Cuban company Almacenes Universales SA to run a logistics complex serving the Port of Mariel, giving a boost to the island’s effort to make itself a transshipment hub. CMA CGM, the world’s No. 3 container ship operator by capacity, said it had entered an agreement with the government of Cuba to build a logistics hub at the Cuban port of Mariel as part of the largest infrastructure investment the island nation has seen in decades. The signing of the agreement between CMA CGM and Cuba's Almacenes Universales SA (AUSA) was timed to coincide with a state visit to Cuba by French President François Hollande accompanied by Matthias Fekl, the French Minister of State for Foreign Trade.

It also has called for greater data monitoring by national competition authorities following recent announcements regarding shipping line collaborations which, it claims, are bringing “the container liner market one step closer to total convergence”. The increased collaboration between the French container ship operator CMA CGM and Germany’s Hamburg Süd will bring the container liner market one step closer to total convergence, the European Shippers’ Council warns. The Brussels-based organization wants a focus on “operational and juridical links between ship owners” and the “correlation between price modification and capacity modification”.

IQPC Exchange interviewed the General Counsel of Maersk Line, Martin Clausen, to find out how the legal department of the largest container ship operator in the world has utilised lean methodologies, and what impact this is having on productivity. Martin's team has implemented a number of systems and methods and is planning to expand these in the future. One of the key tools they have applied so far is a visual management system. The team has also done work observations to investigate how their legal executives currently work, offer tips on how to improve their processes and identify training needs. The next stage planned for the legal department is a Gemba observation, which is a workplace observation technique used in Lean theory.

Recently, International Maritime Security Network, LLC conducted their first phase testing of the originally designed, non-lethal Triton Shield Anti-Piracy System (APS). Horizon Lines, LLC, a US flagged container ship operator serving US domestic routes and Asia, offered their resources and assets to the project. Aboard the container vessel HORIZON CRUSADER, IMSN conducted APS system tests and safety drills with Horizon crew members. Both IMSN and Horizon Lines remain proactive in helping to search for a security solution for not only their own personnel but for everyone throughout the entire maritime industry. The Triton Shield APS uses the most abundant resource available to a ship - water.

Northrop Grumman Corporation has received orders from SRH Marine Electronics SA of Piraeus, Greece, to supply more than 60 simplified voyage data recorders (S-VDRs) for Greek shipowners to meet International Maritime Organization (IMO) regulations requiring S-VDRs on existing merchant ships by July 1, 2007. Northrop Grumman’s Sperry Marine business unit will supply the S-VDR systems and will assist SRH Marine to oversee installation, integration, commissioning and annual performance testing of the systems through its worldwide service network. The S-VDR orders include 23 ships owned by a Greek container ship operator, with the remainder distributed among a number of other Greek shipowners.

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 NOL's results in local papers, saying "the expectations now are for much lower results than what we saw last year". NOL said its business would be down compared with last year and that expectations now were for much lower results than last year, which was an exceptional year for the liner industry.

Shares of Singapore-based Neptune Orient Lines (NOL), the world's sixth largest container ship operator, were suspended on Friday pending an announcement. "We suggested a suspension pending an announcement by them," a spokesman from the Singapore Exchange told Reuters. NOL officials were not immediately available to comment but the market was speculating the firm may issue a statement on its performance expectations. The Straits Times newspaper quoted president and chief executive Flemming Jacobs as saying "the expectations now are for much lower results than what we saw last year". Falling freight rates and sluggish cargo volumes as a result of the global economic downturn have hurt shippers like NOL. NOL shares were trading at S$1.16 before the suspension.