Germany News

Surging shipments into the United States are fueling record high freight costs and logjams at seaports, but transportation executives say the rally will lose steam with a second wave of COVID-19 restrictions on the cards.Container shipping companies, which move goods for customers including Amazon.com and Walmart, got stung late last year and early this year when COVID-19 halted trade around the world, and they question whether the U.S. import boom can be sustained."Let's not get carried away," Rolf Habben Jansen, chief executive of Germany's Hapag Lloyd, told reporters.

Carnival Corporation's Costa Cruises brand said its liquefied natural gas (LNG)-powered flagship Costa Smeralda has become he first vessel to bunker LNG in Italy.Carried out in the port of La Spezia and completed at 6 p.m. on Sunday, the operation was supported by the Italian Coast Guard, Port Authority of Eastern Ligurian Sea, local authorities and Shell, which is the LNG supplier partner for Costa Group and its parent company, Carnival Corporation.The operation took place with the ship berthed at Molo Garibaldi pier…

Russian pipe-laying vessel Akademik Cherskiy, expected to be used to finish the Moscow-led Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, is heading towards the German project hub of Mukran, Refinitiv Eikon data showed on Monday.According to the ship tracking data, the vessel is due to arrive at Mukran port - where pipes for the Nord Stream 2 are stored - on Tuesday Oct. 27, having been near the Russian port of Kaliningrad since early October.The $11 billion Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which Moscow wants to build on the bed of the Baltic Sea to Germany to double the existing Nord Stream pipeline’s capacity…

Towage operator Svitzer Europe announced it will start a new towage operation in Germany’s third-largest North Sea port from January 1, 2021. To fully service customers at the seaport of Emden, Svitzer will deploy two tugboats: the Svitzer Valand, a tractor tug with 45 tons bollard pull and part of the organization’s existing European fleet, and the newly purchased Svitzer Vestri, an azimuth stern drive tug with 60 tons bollard pull. Vestri is a newbuild from Turkish shipbuilder Med Marine…

Maritime cybersecurity is more important than ever, as made clear during an international webinar chaired Wednesday by the United States, the Netherlands and Denmark.The webinar was a continuation of the maritime cybersecurity event in the margins of the One Conference in The Hague in October 2019.Andreas Nordseth, Director General of the Danish Maritime Authority, said, “The technological developments hold great potential for improving the maritime sector even more, and ensuring the necessary digital and green transformation.”However…

The biggest World War Two bomb ever found in Poland exploded under water on Tuesday as navy divers tried to defuse it.More than 750 people had been evacuated from the area near the Piast Canal outside the town of Swinoujscie where the Tallboy bomb used by Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF) was found. It weighed nearly 5,400 kg, including 2,400 kg of explosive.“The deflagration process turned into detonation. The object can be considered as neutralized, it will not pose any more threat…

Dutch dredging giant Boskalis has secured three dredging contracts worth 45 million euros (around USD 53,1 million) in total for coastal protection and port maintenance activities in Germany.The first contract was awarded by the German Waterways and Shipping Office WSA Weser-Jade-Nordsee. It is for the upgrade of the existing coastal defense on the island of Wangerooge for flood protection to the island’s residents.Boskalis said the project would be executed with a local German partner and involves the reinforcement of the groins and revetment for which 200,000 tons of rock will be used.

Ship management company V.Group has appointed Ulla Eithz Nielsen as Managing Director for V.Ships Germany.Based in Hamburg, Nielsen joined V.Group in 2019 and previously held the role of Chief Operating Officer of Operational Excellence.Nielsen began her maritime career as a deck officer with A.P Møller and has experience in operational transformation as well as dry bulk and container vessel expertise gained with A.P Møller, Maersk Line, NORDEN and Norient Product Pool.Franck Kayser…

German shipbuilder MV Werften has said it has secured a 193 million euro loan from the German government to complete the new polar class luxury expedition ship Crystal Endeavor and to keep the shipyard in operation till March 2021. As reported back in April, Genting's Crystal Cruises announced the Crystal Endeavor's launch would be delayed due to the temporary closure of the MV Werften shipyards during the COVID-19 pandemic.The 164-meter, 20,000-gross-ton Crystal Endeavor was…

MAN Energy Solutions announced the successful conclusion of the Type Approval Test (TAT) for its dual-fuel retrofit kit for its MAN 32/40 engine type. The TAT took place at the company’s Augsburg, Germany works from September 15-18, 2020 with the participation of the three classification societies: DNV GL, American Bureau of Shipping, and Lloyd’s Register.The TAT confirmed the suitability of the retrofit kit for converting the company’s field-proven MAN 32/40 engine into a dual-fuel unit – a so-called MAN 32/40R-DF type – that can now run on fossil and renewable…

Singapore-base ship management firm Thome Group and German shipowner Carsten Rehder have agreed to cooperate in a joint venture to take over the ship management of the latter's owned and managed fleet of dry bulk, container and multipurpose vessels.The new company is to be called Thome Shipmanagement Germany GmbH & Co. KG with the Thome Group and Carsten Rehder as the two shareholders. The ship management staff at Carsten Rehder will be absorbed into this new joint venture.Carsten…

Russian shipping company Sovcomflot is guiding investors to expect its initial public offering (IPO) to price at the low end of the marketing range, two bookrunners organizing the transaction said on Tuesday.The first big stock market float by a Russian company in a couple of years comes as wider investor sentiment towards Moscow has turned negative after the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, protests in Belarus and renewed clashes in Nagorno-Karabakh.Russian assets…

Turkish shipbuilder Med Marine said it has won repeat business from Maersk's towage arm, securing an order to deliver a new 23-meter tug for Svitzer’s German fleet.The contract signed last week for a MED-A2360 series tug follows a deal inked in September 2019 for two 30-meter icebreaking tugs for the Danish operator's Scandinavian operations. The newly ordered vessel (hull name ER80) will have 60-ton bollard pull and is set for November 2020.The MED-A2360 series tug is based on Robert Allan’s RAmparts 2300-MM designed exclusively for Med Marine by the Canadian vessel designer.

Polish divers say they have found the wreck of a German World War Two ship which may help solve a decades-old mystery - the whereabouts of the Amber Room, an ornate chamber from a tsarist palace in Russia that was looted by the Nazis.Decorated with amber and gold, the Amber Room was part of the Catherine Palace near St Petersburg, but was last seen in Koenigsberg, then a Baltic port city in Germany but now the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.It was from Koenigsberg that the Karlsruhe steamer set sail in 1945 with a heavy cargo…

Twelve crew members of a cruise ship that docked at Piraeus port near Athens on Tuesday tested negative for the novel coronavirus in repeat checks by Greek health authorities, the ship's operator TUI Cruises said.The Mein Shiff 6 cruise ship had departed from Heraklion in Crete on Sunday with all 922 passengers having tested negative before boarding.But sample tests on 150 members out of the ship's total crew of 666, conducted at a land lab, detected 12 COVID-19 infections.Sailing off the island of Milos…

A cruise ship carrying about 920 passengers was expected to dock at Piraeus port near Athens, after 12 of its crew members tested positive for the coronavirus, an official at Greece's Civil Protection agency said on Monday.The Mein Shiff 6, operated by TUI Cruises, departed from Heraklion in Crete on Sunday with all passengers having tested negative before boarding.But sample tests on 150 crew members out of a total of 666, detected 12 infections. The ship's operators TUI Cruises said six of the 12 had since tested negative."They are all asymptomatic," the civil protection official said.

Norwegian engineering and equipment company TECO 2030 ASA said it has signed a letter of intent with Austrian-based powertrain deveolper AVL List GmbH and Dutch shipping company Chemgas Shipping B.V. for the use of fuel cell technology as the main energy source for tugboats in the Blue Danube hydrogen project and similar projects.The Blue Danube project is among Europe’s most ambitious hydrogen projects. It involves production of 80,000 tons of green annually based on wind power in Romania…

Finland-based Wärtsilä said it will divest 100% of the shares in Wärtsilä JOVYATLAS GmbH to Jacob Waitz Industrie GmbH, a German based industry holding.Wärtsilä JOVYATLAS has been manufacturing uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems, rectifiers, power inverters, frequency transformers and resistors with related services for many industries for seven decades. The company became part of Wärtsilä as a result of the acquisition of L-3 Communications MSI in 2015. Wärtsilä JOVYATLAS is located in Jemgum in Germany, and currently has some 125 employees.

TUI is planning a share sale to raise up to 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion), as the world's largest holiday company looks to ride out the coronavirus-linked travel slump, people close to the matter said.No decisions have been taken and a number of options are still on the table, the people said, adding a possible equity injection by a German government rescue fund was being discussed.Russian billionaire Alexey Mordashov, who owns 25% of the London-listed firm, is expected to invest pro-rata in any rights issue, which could be decided in the coming weeks, the sources said.TUI and the German fina

Berlin offered to spend 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) to build two liquid natural gas terminals in a bid to dissuade the United States from imposing sanctions over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, due to bring gas directly from Russia to Germany, Die Zeit reported on Wednesday.The weekly paper said Finance Minister Olaf Scholz made the proposal in an Aug. 7 letter before Washington imposed sanctions on companies involved in building the Baltic Sea pipeline, effectively freezing its…

The first ever PBST-branded and -built cluster-3 SCR-HP system has passed its ClassNK approval test at the MAKITA works in Japan, MAKITA Corporation and MAN Energy Solutions announced.The compact SCR system is one of four – originally ordered in 2018 and 2019 – for vessels featuring MAN B&W two-stroke engines with two now delivered and the others currently en route to customers. An MAN B&W 6S46ME-B8.5 engine will power each vessel, with the SCR-HP system making each vessel Tier III-compatible.

Marine fuels services provider KPI OceanConnect announced Tuesday it has appointed industry expert Boris Gronenberg as Managing Director of its Hamburg operations.KPI OceanConnect’s Hamburg office is located at the heart of Hamburg’s shipping community and is one of 16 in the recently merged group.“Joining KPI OceanConnect at this time is very exciting,” Gronenberg said. “The recent merger of KPI Bridge Oil and OceanConnect Marine has created one of the largest and most experienced independent marine fuels service and solutions providers in the world.

An impressive recovery in Chinese dry bulk imports has protected the industry from the effects of falling demand in the rest of the world. High deliveries and low contracting have left the orderbook at multi-year lows, but – with the poor outlook – the current influx of new dry bulk ships orders is not what is needed.Demand drivers and freight ratesThe biggest story in the dry bulk industry in recent months has been the strength of the recovery in major Chinese imports. These are up across the board…