LONDON's Drewry Maritime's Carrier Performance Insight team reports that service standards in the container shipping are as low as 40 per cent when weighed against key performance indicators.
For "on-time shipment of cargo", whether a container leaves port as scheduled had a success rate of 66-70 per cent, showing delays were common before loading.
"An average score of 70 per cent is far too low for a key service industry," said Drewry research chief Simon Heaney. "Carriers will have to aim higher."
The most reliable carriers, said the report were Maersk Line and sister company Safmarine followed by Hanjin.
Four in 10 shippers obtained a bill of lading within three days of submitting shipping instructions, said the report. Performances ranged between zero per cent and 93 per cent over the October 2011 to February 2012 survey period, reported London's International Freighting Weekly. Transit times noted were better, but 25 per cent of containers spent longer at sea than planned.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
CHINA Merchants Logistics is to build a distribution centre in eastern China's inland City of Hefei, which will be the state-run group's first project in Hefei, Xinhua reports.
The facility will cost CNY1.1 billion (US$174.1 million) and take up an area of 17.53 hectares. It will offer supply chain service for local manufacturers of home appliances, automobile, machines, pharmaceutical and other consumer products.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
SOUTHERN China's island province of Hainan has built an agricultural product trading and logistics centre in the northern city of Tianjin.
This is Hainan's first such facility outside the province, and is invested by the Hainan provincial government to secure steady sales volume of Hainan's farm products in northern China, Xinhua reports.
The facility cost CNY286 million (US$45.2 million) to build, occupying 15.14 hectares, comprising of three trading halls, one exhibition hall. It will offer cold chain logistics services such refrigerated transportation and storage for the perishables.
The facility will develop into a distribution hub for agricultural products from Hainan, northern and eastern China, and even those from Japan, Korea and Russia.
Hainan's agricultural product sales volume in the Bohai Rim region accounts for more than a quarter of provincial produce sales.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
GUANGZHOU is to widen the range of its existing logistics indexes to better reflect the development of the industry, Xinhua reports.
Guangzhou will add logistics industry added value, social logistics cost (the cost of all logistics operations), social logistics industry output and social logistics value to the existing cargo transportation volume and turnover volume. (Social logistics in a mainland term encompassing all logistics business from micro to macro.)
An Guangzhou Transportation Commission official pointed out that more detailed indexes can help government devise better policies for the future development of the logistics industry and can be a better indicator for the enterprises to refer to and adjust their strategy and allocate their resources.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
CARGOTEC has established Rainbow-Cargotec Industries Co Ltd (RCI) in a joint venture with Jiangsu Rainbow Heavy Industries north of Shanghai.
Cargotec's ownership in the joint venture is 49 per cent and its equity investment in the joint venture is EUR30 million (US$38.35 million).
The joint venture RCI will build a new facility to Taicang in China to increase Cargotec's delivery capacity, a company statement said. The foundation stone of the facility will be laid in June.
RCI is tasked with providing heavy crane solutions globally and seizing growth opportunities in the Chinese and global markets. The joint venture will focus on ship-to-shore cranes, rubber-tyre gantries (RTG), rail mounted gantry cranes and marine specialty cranes.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
DUBAI's DP World chairman Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem and vice chairman Jamal Majid Bin Thaniah have made a tour of inspection of their DP World Dakar terminal in Senegal.
Mr Bin Sulayem and Mr Bin Thaniah also toured Terminal Conteneur, West Africa's largest and most modern container facility, managed and operated by DP World Dakar.
Four quay cranes and 10 rubber tyre gantries (RTG) were installed at the terminal recently, completing the upgrading work, which included a new gate complex and new reefer storage facilities, said the DP World statement.
The terminal opened last November after DP World carried out new expansion work that more than doubled capacity to 600,000 TEU under a concession agreement signed in 2007.
Said Mr Bin Sulayem: "As the most modern and efficient terminal in western Africa, DP World Dakar acts as a growth engine in a rapidly developing emerging market region."
Since winning the Dakar concession in 2007, DP World has introduced window berthing, where vessels book a specific time they can berth, virtually eliminating waiting time at anchorage, said the release.
DP World has also reduced truck turnarounds to less than half an hour and introduced clear tariffs and processes supported by modern technology systems.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
WITH EBIT down 2.2 per cent and cash-flow off by 19.8 per cent, Australia's Toll Group is considering the future of its Japanese trucker Footwork and other loss-making divisions, according to the UK's Transport Intelligence.
"Continued pressure from the soft retail sector in Australia affected the financial performance of our domestic businesses with an exposure to that sector, together with weakness in the global apparel sector impacted on volumes and EBIT in Toll Global Forwarding," said Toll managing director Brian Kruger.
This, he said, has prompted the company to take "a close look at underperforming businesses and are already undertaking strategic reviews of Footwork Express, Toll Marine Logistics Asia and Toll Refrigerated."
Toll Group quarterly revenue was up 4.7 per cent at A$4.43 billion (US$4.407 billion) with EBITDA increased 5.2 per cent at A$380 million (US$377 million).
Toll's forwarding division, results were affected Footwork's problems which experienced a revenue decline of two per cent. Without Footwork numbers, the division would have made 5.7 per cent more revenue and 3.8 per cent more EBITDA.
Reporting a "swing from air freight to ocean freight in the retail sector during calendar 2012", Toll said its first quarter ocean freight volume came in at 248,000 TEU while air freight stood at 66,000 tonnes.
This shift from air to sea was common to all markets, with importers in all regions minimising high-cost air cargo services, said the report.
Toll Global Logistics revenue was up 4.8 per cent and EBITDA increased 11.8 per cent. Here, contract logistics in Asian markets generally prospered, with chemical, FMCG, and automotive logistics growing in markets such as Singapore and Malaysia. But the China business was hit by rising costs of labour and fuel.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
PROJECTS FPS - the recently-established project forwarding and third-party logistics arm of Famous Pacific Shipping Lanka - has cleared and delivered a 9,000 cubic metre shipment of brewery equipment from Colombo to a new brewery at Meegoda, 35 kilometres inland.
The project - which included 37 stainless steel tanks, the largest of which measured 15 metres long and five metres in diameter - arrived in Colombo aboard a chartered vessel from Denmark.
Project FPS, a member of FPS, with its permanent secretariat in Hong Kong, transported the tanks inland over 10 nights, using two purpose-built 15 metre long low-loader trailers with rear steering to negotiate turns in the road.
The trip to the new Millers brewery also involved passing under many low-hanging telecoms and power cables. This required the assistance of staff from Ceylon Electricity Board and Sri Lanka Telecom. All movements were conducted under police escort.
Said Project FPS manager Mohan Lazarus: "This was a massive undertaking. Although the route was short, it included many challenging obstacles. But everything went well, and the customer was pleased. We would like to thank the police and utilities staff for their help throughout."
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
RUSSIAN tycoon Sergei Generalov, the controlling shareholder and president of Far Eastern Shipping Company (FESCO), has decided to sell the country's once the country's biggest shipping company after disputes with the Kremlin over his ambitions, reports New York's Business Insider.
The reported sale talks are a signal that Generalov is willing to sell if he is paid enough, reported Russia's often controversial business daily, Kommersant. The reported buyer is Summa Capital. owned by Ziyavudin Magmedov, a rival of Mr Generalov's ports and container activities.
Maritime industry sources said they were not surprised at the planned sale as FESCO is struggling and Mr Generalof's expansion plans into container handling and rail logistics has been thwarted by Russian Railways (RZD) boss Vladimir Yakunin and the Ministry of Transport.
Their opposition has also made the profitability of Mr Generalov's railway operations vulnerable to state competition, said the report.
Mr Generalov wanted to buy control of Transcontainer, the state-owned rail carrier and dominant intermodal players, but was blocked by Mr Yakunin and the Kremlin. FESCO's market value has reportedly collapsed from a peak of US$3.5 billion in 2008 to $700 million and $1 billion since January.
Mr Generalov holds 56 per cent of FESCO through his holding of Industrial Investors. Another 13 per cent is held as treasury stock through an offshore entity called Neteller Holdings. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and East Capital holds four per cent and a Swedish investment fund has seven per cent. Public shareholders of Moscow-listed FESCO hold 20 per cent.
FESCO's shipping generates 10 per cent of its operating profit, while its port terminals add another 22 per cent. If Mr Magomedov takes over, and combines it with his quarter-share in the Novorossiysk and Primorsk port companies, he may improve his status as a preferred bidder.
Mr Magomedov may then figure more in the privatisation of other port assets around the country, as well as in the government's privatisation plan for Transcontainer, said the report.
Mr Generalov's exit reportedly reflects the weakening of Russia's container business, and the intensification of competition between Russian box carriers. The slowing of growth of Russia's container volumes, reported as the third quarter gave way to the fourth quarter last year, has now turned into an outright decline in the latest figures released for the first quarter by Transcontainer.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
AN Air Cargo Carrier Shorts SD-360, on a freight flight from Tupelo, Mississippi, to Houston Intercontinental, with two crew aboard, had already landed on Houston's runway 27 and was taxiing when fire broke out in the brakes of the right main landing gear.
The aircraft stopped, emergency services responded deploying numerous fire engines and put the fire out, reported the accident tracking Aviation Herald of Salzburg, Austria. No injuries occurred, the aircraft however received substantial damage to the right hand main gear and right wing, said the report.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported the aircraft was already on the taxiway when a tyre caught fire causing substantial damage to the aircraft. The FAA is investigating the occurrence.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
CARGOLUX Airlines International has commenced a twice-weekly scheduled cargo service connecting Luxembourg to Chongqing in southwestern China.
The service from Luxembourg to Chongqing' s Jianbai International Airport also makes stops in Doha, Sharjah, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Baku (Azerbaijan) and Tbilisi (Georgia).
"In adding Chongqing to our portfolio of global destinations, we are extending our dense coverage of the most important Asian destinations. We see a lot of potential in Chongqing, not least because of the planned expansion of the airport's cargo facilities to accommodate the region's burgeoning export market," said Cargolux president and CEO Frank Reimen.
The airline took delivery of its third Boeing 747-8 freighter in March, bringing its current fleet to 15 Boeing freighters.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
DHL Global Forwarding is building a new logistics centre at Brussels Airport that will involve a EUR27 million (US$34.25 million) investment.
The new facility will occupy 54,000-square metres, including 23,000 square metres of warehouse space to unite the company's air freight activities under one roof at Brucargo West, the airport's freight zone.
According to Jean-Claude Delen, CEO DHL Global Forwarding BeNeLux and France, the company's new logistics platform will reinforce its strategy to focus on the specific logistics needs of its various key industry sectors.
"DHL Global Forwarding's choice for Brucargo strengthens the status of the cargo area and Brussels Airport as a key employment platform in Belgium. Brussels Airport is our country's second economic driver, providing 20,000 direct and 40,000 indirect jobs," Mr Delen said in a statement.
The new building will feature a 1,750 square metres temperature-controlled area to meet the needs of the company's life science customers. It will also be equipped with environmental technologies including solar panel installations and water recovery systems.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
All the major trades saw declines last week as Asia-Europe rates experienced the biggest plunge, down 4.2 per cent to US$1,742 per TEU from the previous week, according to the latest Shanghai Containerised Freight Index (SCFI).
Asia-Mediterranean spot rates contracted 3.2 per cent to $1,872 per TEU for the week.
On the Asia-US trades, east coast rates were down 1.4 per cent week to week to $3,490 per FEU, while rates to the US west coast declined 2.6 per cent to $2,330 per FEU.
Across all trades covered by the index the SCFI was down 2.7 per cent to 1,426 points.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
FOLLOWING its 90 per cent decline in 2011 net profit, Hong Kong's Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL) announced that it plans to raise rates again for container shipments transported from north Europe to Asia, beginning June 15 to boost profitability.
OOCL plans to increase freight rates by US$200 per container (TEU and FEU) for all shipments carried on this trade route, the Dow Jones reports.
The latest rate increase comes after OOCL raised its freight rate for the same route by US$200 per box on May 15.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
TIANJIN Port Group (TPG) and Singapore's PSA International (PSA) has signed a "strategic cooperation framework agreement" to further strengthen the collaboration between the companies for the development of Tianjin port.
So far, PSA has invested in two of the port's container terminals, namely Tianjin Port Pacific International Container Terminal (TPCT) and Tianjin Port Alliance International Container Terminal (TACT).
These two facilities have a total of 10 berths that can handle the biggest containerships. This makes "Tianjin Port one of the preferred ports of call for mega containerships in the northeast Asia region," said the joint statement.
Said TPG president Tian Chang Song: "Both organisations recognise the tremendous potential of Tianjin Port as a major container hub in the Bohai Rim to support the further development of industries and hinterland investments in northeast China. Together, TPG and PSA aim to ensure that Tianjin Port will be a world class facility for global container shipping."
Said PSA chief executive Tan Chong Meng: "PSA is committed to give its best expertise and resources to help develop Tianjin Port into a resounding success."
The agreement was signed on May 18 by TPG group president Tian Chang Song and PSA group CEO Tan Chong Meng in the presence of TPG chairman Yu Ru Min and PSA group chairman Fock Siew Wah.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
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