LONDON's SBS Worldwide, an air and ocean forwarder, has appointed Michael Mohan as its new UK air freight general manager to its senior management team to further develop the division's continued growth in key markets.
Mr Mohan, of more than 30 years' industry experience at Ceva Logistics, K&N and Schenker, has been tasked with delivering SBS's new strategic business plan across its air freight operation and support its drive to become fully integrated into customers' logistics operations through further IT developments.
"SBS Worldwide's ability to offer local expertise backed up by the buying power and software solutions of a larger group means it is in an ideal position to drive growth," said Mr Mohan, who will also lead the company's recently launched consultancy division of Virtualised Logistics.
"Michael will play a key role in implementing our strategic global development plan and will strengthen company and group structure," said group chairman Steve Walker in a company statement. "Michael is very experienced and we are confident he can meet this challenge," he added.
Source Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
CHINA Southern Airlines launched two ad-hoc cargo flights from Shanghai to Sydney in late February to try out the Shanghai-Australia cargo market, Xinhua reports.
In view of rapid growth of capacity on the Guangzhou-Australia line, China Southern has conducted an in-depth research on the Shanghai-Australia line potential before launching the two flights as preparation of breaking into the market.
At present, 90 per cent of the cargo bound for Sydney from Shanghai choose Sydney as their destination. Other destinations include Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Canberra.
Source Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
ROYAL Jordanian Cargo is preparing to levy a surcharge from March 1 on customers to offset a carbon tax proposed by the European Union. However, the new EU fee is not expected to be introduced for another year.
According to India's Economic Times, there are concerns that the airline's plan may be adopted by the nation's air freight industry. Royal Jordanian currently operates in India mainly through Mumbai and Delhi.
However, such fears have been dismissed by Kapil Kaul, CEO South Asia of the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, saying, "Royal Jordanian does not have a significant presence in India. These are some isolated cases. And the fight is no longer an airline-versus-EU fight. It is countries versus the EU."
The move also comes in the wake of protests from governments in India, the US, China and Brazil over Europe's "insistence on making airlines flying to most of the continent pay for the carbon they emit," the report said.
"We have sent a communication saying that EU tax applies only from next year and why you are jumping into it now. They have not replied yet," said Asad Cassim, secretary general of the Air Cargo Agents Association of India. "According to one of the scenarios, others might follow suit. This will add to our cargo charges in an already slowing operating environment."
According to the report, the airline is proposing to implement a carbon surcharge of INR2.40 per kg from March 1, which would be a first in India.
Under the EU plan, airlines would be offered allowances to cover 85 per cent of their emissions. The calculations of carbon emissions are to start from January 2012. But the actual tax is to be implemented in 2013. Airlines that do not comply could face fines of US$130 for each tonne of carbon dioxide emitted for which they haven't surrendered the allowances. Persistent offenders could also face bans, the report added.
Source Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
SINGAPORE'S Changi Airport Group (CAG) will close it's Budget Terminal for demolition on September 25, 2012 to make way for the construction of a larger passenger building, Terminal 4, to cater for continued growth at the airport.
To facilitate the construction of Terminal 4, airlines operating in the Budget Terminal will transfer to Terminal 2 from 6am September 25. Affected airlines are Berjaya Air, Cebu Pacific, Firefly, South East Asian Airlines and Tiger Airways.
The new terminal, to be known as Terminal 4, will have a capacity of 16 million passengers a year with a design to enhance quick turnaround of passengers from aircraft without the use of aerobridges. Construction of the terminal will begin in 2013 and to be operational by 2017.
CAG has had discussions with the airlines operating at the Budget Terminal since late last year regarding the terminal's closure. It will work with the respective airlines to ensure a smooth transition of their operations, and will endeavour to minimise inconvenience to passengers as far as possible.
Source Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
Following a slight downturn in 2010, volumes in container handling between the Port of Hamburg and Poland recovered notably in 2011. Feedership container traffic with Poland, for instance, grew by 33.3 percent to 238,000 TEU (20-feet standard containers) and with Eastern Europe as a whole by 38.7 percent to 1,07 million TEU. So it comes as no surprise that feeder connections between Hamburg and the Polish ports were further expanded during 2011. Altogether five new feeder services commenced operation between Hamburg and Baltic ports in 2011.
The Polish ports of Gdańsk, Gdynia, Świnoujście and Szczecin are served from Hamburg by eleven feeder services with a total of 20 sailings per week. In addition, Hamburg with its well-developed rail connections and its dense autobahn network fulfills an essential hub function for traffic with its East Europe hinterland. For instance, provisional estimates by Port of Hamburg Marketing indicated that between Hamburg and Poland a comparable transport volume to 2010 of approximately 240,000 TEU was reached on truck and rail container traffic. A precise calculation of the 2011 figures is not yet available.
For the Port of Hamburg and its marketing organization Port of Hamburg Marketing, this very positive throughput trend is reason enough to participate in the Intermodal Conference being held as part of Transport Week in Gdańsk from 6 – 8 March. Claudia Roller, CEO of Port of Hamburg Marketing, will be attending this conference and delivering a presentation on the topic “The European market seen from the North Sea hub port Hamburg”.
Transport Week is designed for experts from port, shipping and transport companies as well as institutions and trade associations. Approaches are also made to the financial sector and universities. The conference aims to broaden knowledge of the transport market for those present, and to bring together international experts from different sectors of the shipping and transport industry. With lectures, discussions and a gala dinner, the three days of the conference offer participants a very varied program. The keynote themes of Transport Week will be considered during the Port Strategy & Investment Conference, the Baltic Container Conference, and the Intermodal Conference. Additional details can be downloaded from www.actiaconferences.com
Source Hafen Hamburg Marketing e.V.
Scania is now taking a further step in its efforts to reduce the climate impact from its own operations. Using renewable bioethanol as a fuel rather than fossil-based diesel will help reduce the climate impact of carbon dioxide emissions from Scania’s own goods transport services at its production facilities in Södertälje, Sweden, by approximately 70 percent. The eight ethanol trucks that are now being put into operation will contribute to a decrease in CO2 emissions equal to that of 12 normal homes heated by fossil-based electrical energy.
“As a supplier of transport solutions, it is important for us to take the lead in developing sustainable alternative solutions and demonstrate how sustainability and efficiency are linked in practice,” says Anders Nielsen, Scania’s Head of Production and Logistics.
Scania currently offers a series of climate- and energy-efficient products and services – Ecolution by Scania – that helps transport companies reduce their carbon dioxide emissions and maximise revenue from their truck and bus operations. Ecolution by Scania is a comprehensive solution including optimised vehicles, driver training and continuous monitoring of both vehicles and drivers. In distribution services, switching to vehicles that run on biofuels will lead to a substantial reduction in climate impact.
In Södertälje, Scania primarily operates trucks to transport components and packaging material between its various production and assembly workshops. These internal freight traffic operations were recently taken over by the Scania Transport Laboratory, a wholly-owned subsidiary that tests and evaluates vehicle characteristics and performance in commercial haulage. Its task also includes developing and monitoring Scania’s drivers with regard to economic and safe driving.
“By switching to ethanol, Scania is demonstrating that sustainable solutions can be achieved – here and now – with technology that is already available today,” says Anders Nielsen.
To help increase the availability of renewable fuels for commercial vehicles, Scania will open a public filling station in Södertälje later this year with fuel dispensers for RME (rapeseed methyl ester), ED95 (ethanol) and biogas.
Source Scania
Kongsberg Maritime has been selected to provide a range of rugged compact Power Over Ethernet (POE) cameras to Montreal-based L-3 MAPPS Inc. (L-3 MAPPS) as part of the Canadian Navy’s HALIFAX Class Frigate upgrade.
The HALIFAX class frigate (hull designation FFH) is a class of 12 multi-role patrol frigates that has served the Canadian Forces since 1992. In 2007, the Canadian government announced a planned refit of the HALIFAX class known as the HALIFAX Class Modernization Project.
L-3 MAPPS is the prime contractor for the supply of its Integrated Platform Management System (IPMS) upgrade. The L-3 IPMS provides integrated monitoring and control of ship propulsion, electrical functions, damage control machinery and systems. The digital CCTV system, typically used for monitoring ship machinery spaces, can be displayed on the IPMS consoles. The system can be configured to automatically display the CCTV image as soon as an active fire sensor is detected in a compartment equipped with CCTV.
Following its success with other Navy programs, Kongsberg Maritime has integrated the latest camera technology into a unique, extremely robust and compact package. All cameras feature the latest H.264 video compression and will work from any standard POE-enabled network switch. Camera options include megapixel colour day/night cameras with IR LEDs and LWIR thermal cameras. All equipment has been fully qualified for naval use, including MIL-STD-901D Shock (Grade A) and MIL-STD-461E for EMI.
Source Kongsberg Maritime
Schindellegi/Switzerland, March 1, 2012 – The Kuehne + Nagel Group is setting new standards in the handling of pharmceutical products. As part of its KN PharmaChain product, the company is introducing newly developed active wireless sensors which record and transmit the temperature of pharmaceutical airfreight shipments along the entire supply chain.
The use of active wireless sensors is a major achievement in the segment of seamless airfreight cold chains for pharmaceutical products. Generally, security rules prohibit the active use of mobile sensors during the air transport. However, together with a number of airline partners,Kuehne + Nagel thoroughly tested low-emission devices which can stay active during the flight so that the temperature is being constantly measured and reported practically in real-time. Kuehne + Nagel is the first company to provide this service to customers from the pharmaceutical and health care industry. In order to guarantee seamless temperature visibility from pick-up to delivery of the cargo,warehouses and logistics facilities both of Kuehne + Nagel and its airline partners will be equipped with transmitting technology. The same applies to pre-and-on-carriage vehicles. The service is part of a comprehensive package of new tailor-made airfreight offerings to the pharmaceutical industry. Full transparency is provided to custom rs as the temperature indications can be viewed directly inside the KN Login online tool.
“By introducing this service we are setting new, quite revolutionary standards in the cold chain airfreight market and we will extend the offering step by step to other industry groups”, explains Tim Scharwath, Executive Vice President Air Logistics of Kuehne + Nagel International AG.
Source Kuehne + Nagel
2012-03-02
The apprentices from the insolvent printing press manufacturer manroland will be joining MAN Diesel & Turbo on 1st March 2012. The company is taking over 116 of the total of 145 apprentices, who are working in Augsburg. The remaining 30 apprentices will be employed at manroland webservice, a successor company to the printing press manufacturing firm.
"We are absolutely delighted to be able to offer these opportunities to the manroland apprentices," says Dr. René Umlauft, CEO of MAN Diesel & Turbo and deputy member of the Executive Board of MAN SE. "It is very important for us to safeguard the successful training and professional futures of the young people."
In February 2011, MAN Diesel & Turbo welcomed 20 trainees from man-roland, with a further 16 switching to RENK AG in Augsburg, a company in which the MAN Group holds a majority share. MAN Diesel & Turbo is investing an additional approximately Euro 6 million in its training for taking over the apprentices.
The MAN Training Academy in Augsburg is the largest training centre in Bavarian Swabia. Currently around 470 apprentices from the companies MAN Diesel & Turbo, RENK and manroland, as well as further partner firms in the Augsburg economic area, receive training in eleven industrial/technical disciplines.
Source MAN SE
HAGUE-based APM Terminals, Maersk's port operator, has posted a 10 per cent year-on-year increase in operating profit to US$1.05 billion in 2011, making the results the "strongest ever", said CEO Kim Fejfer.
"If there were such a thing as a market share for expansion, we believe that APM Terminals would be the number one global port operator in 2011 in that category," he said.
The terminal operator net operating profit after tax in 2011 was $649 million, while profits, excluding sales gains and impairment losses, rose 24 per cent compared to $611 million in the previous year.
"This shows that APM Terminals is tracking well towards our long term goal of being the best and most profitable global port operator in the world. Profitability is our licence to grow," said Mr Fejfer.
And the return on invested capital, considered the "most important single key figure for the port operator" reached 13.1 per cent, showing a significant increase in profitability from 2010 where the return percentage was 10.4 per cent when corrected for divestment gains and special items.
In response to the expansion plan for the next decade, Mr Fejfer said the company is "eager to secure the lion's share of global growth opportunities."
Said Mr Fejfer: "We committed more than $3 billion to infrastructure development and facility expansion in 2011 and expect to do something similar in 2012."
During 2011, APM Terminals added five new locations to its company portfolio, including Poti in Georgia; Moin in Costa Rica; Callao in Peru, Gothenburg in Sweden and Lazaro Cardenas in Mexico. The terminal operator has also recently announced upcoming investments in Izmir, Turkey.
Regarding container handling volumes, it handled 33.5 million TEU in 2011, a eight per cent growth year on year.
"We are very humble about the fact that although financial performance went well some of our customers' experience has been more mixed as operations in container terminals in North Africa and the Middle East were negatively influenced by unrest related to the Arab Spring during 2011."
Volumes from customers outside the company's ownership sphere increased by 11 per cent year on year and now constitute 46 per cent of volumes handled.
"2011 was also the year where we developed and implemented a new corporate visual identity to enhance the APM Terminals brand as a truly independent company," he said.
Source Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
THE captain and second officer of the stricken 3,036-TEU containership Rena have pleaded guilty in Tauranga District Court of New Zealand for mishandling the vessel and forging documents.
Both the 44-year-old captain and 37-year-old navigation officer are Filipinos, and were charged after an investigation into the ship's collision with Astrolabe Reef off Tauranga on October 5, reported London's Containerisation International. Both men are on bail and await sentencing on May 25 They face a maximum of seven years imprisonment.
New Zealand environment minister, Nick Smith, said earlier that a "crude estimate" of MSC-chartered and Costamar-owned Rena's salvage cost was NZ$130 million (US$108 million), but the final cost is likely to be higher as the operation of removing the containers continues.
Community leaders have asked MSC Costamare bear some of the costs involved, reported New Zealand's Bay of Plenty Times.
Source Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
FRANCE's main gateway Le Havre has registered an overall traffic decline in 2011, but container volumes had returned to growth by year end, despite slip in the fourth quarter.
Container traffic, which represents a third of Le Havre's 68.5 million tonnes of annual cargo, found its way back to growth over the course of the year, but ended the period with a decline of six per cent mainly due to a 28 per cent drop in transshipment volumes.
Poor first quarter results with a throughput of 483,000 TEU were partly offset over the following months, reported London's International Freighting Weekly, especially in the summer when the facility handled 600,000 TEU, but fourth quarter traffic slowed again to 576,000 TEU.
A port spokesman said gains came from productivity improvements, but that this could not counter the tough economic conditions, which returned later in the year. Traffic handled by inland waterways, although a small proportion of the result, was a healthy and rapidly growing component of overall box volumes.
The results reflected the "strained economic situation" in global markets, according to a port spokesman.
Despite an overall upturn of four per cent in the second half compared to the same period in 2010, annual tonnage processed at Le Havre declined by four per cent, with port officials blaming France's shrinking export trade and lower consumption by French consumers.
Source Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
NEW YORK listed Seaspan, with major offices in Hong Kong and Vancouver but registered in the Marshall Islands, has posted a 83.4 per cent decline in 2011 net profit to US$23.5 million.
The company it achieved vessel utilisation of 99.5 per cent for the fourth quarter and 99.3 per cent for the full year 2011, according to the company statement.
It also received deliveries of 10 new vessels in 2011, bringing Seaspan's operating fleet to 65 vessels at the end of 2011, which include four 13,100-TEU ships, chartered to Cosco.
"Seaspan once again grew both its fleet and revenue stream under contract, achieved strong utilisation and increased net earnings and cash flow. In addition to taking delivery of 10 vessels that commenced fixed-rate time charters with leading liner companies, we took advantage of a compelling ship acquisition environment to commence our next phase of fleet growth.
"As we pursue opportunities to further grow our fleet, we intend to continue to capitalise on our SAVER vessel design, which we believe provides customers with improved efficiency and operational savings."
In the fourth quarter, the company signed agreements with MSC to bareboat charter the world's second largest carrier four 4,800-TEU vessels, each for a five-year term, with effect from October and November 2011.
As a result, Seaspan posted a loss on vessels of $16.2 million for 2011. Said the company statement: "MSC has agreed to purchase the vessels for $5 million each at the end of the five-year bareboat charter terms. Each transaction is considered a sales-type lease and is accounted for as a disposition of vessels upon delivery of each vessel."
Source Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
US President Barack Obama has created an interagency government office to investigate unfair global trade practices by countries including China, Bloomberg reports.
The Interagency Trade Enforcement Centre will sit within the US Trade Representative office, and include staff drawn from the departments of Commerce, Agriculture, Homeland Security, Justice, State and Treasury, as well as US intelligence agencies.
"We are doubling down on the administration's commitment to strong trade enforcement," said Ron Kirk, the US Trade Representative. "We'll continue to press our trading partners" to comply with World Trade Organisation rules "and abide by obligations."
The White House budget submitted to Congress has requested US$26 million in funding for the office to include at least 50 staff. The US has filed five complaints against China at the WTO since Obama took office in 2009.
Source Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
A PIRATE attack on a containership at the north end of the Strait of Hormuz has been deterred in a live fire incident involving private shipboard armed guards, Bloomberg reports.
According to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) the attack by three boats on the 18,830-dwt vessel at the northern-most area of the Gulf of Oman is the closest ever attack on this area.
The strait carries 20 per cent of the world's oil, and used by tankers from Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
The EU Naval Force declined to name the vessel or record the attack as "gun fire was not exchanged". But the incident marks a significant move deeper into the northern most Gulf of Oman with two attacks since January, said IMB's London manager in London Cyrus Mody.
Britain has stationed the 8,000-ton destroyer HMS Daring to patrol the strait between Oman and Iran in response to Iranian threats to close the strait after western countries placed an embargo on its oil exports.
Source Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
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