General Average has now been declared on the fire-stricken X-Press Pearl after the blaze aboard the ship worsened overnight due to strong winds and deteriorating weather conditions.
The vessel’s owner and operator X-Press Feeders said that early this morning the vessel’s crew and 12 firefighters disembarked “as a safety precautionary measure”.
Source: The Loadstar
There is little chance of congestion in the supply chain being resolved before the fourth quarter of the year, although some signs of improvement may begin to appear in time for the traditional peak season.
“We still see an enormous surge in demand that is overwhelming the shipping industry,” said Hapag-Lloyd chief executive Rolf Habben Jansen. “This has had a huge impact on spot rates, and there are still operational challenges and capacity bottlenecks.
Source: Lloyd´s Loading List
IATA does not plan to ban the transport of lithium ion batteries by air, following a recent airport fire, but is calling for greater penalties for errors and better collaboration with governments.
Following a spate of airlines – as well as a shipping line – banning the shipment of some Vivo mobile phones after the fire in Hong Kong, IATA said it had stepped up discussions but did not support an outright ban.
Source: The Loadstar
The U.K. began formal preparation for a free-trade agreement with India, a post-Brexit target for Prime Minister Boris Johnson as he seeks to prove the benefit of leaving the European Union.
Britain will do a 14-week consultation on the potential accord with the world’s largest democracy with the aim of starting negotiations in the fall, the Department for International Trade said in a statement. The U.K. and India want to double trade between their two countries by 2030, up from about 23 billion pounds ($33 billion) in 2019.
Source: AJOT, Bloomberg
The Suez Canal Authority (SCA) said on Tuesday it was still open to negotiating with the owners of a giant container ship which blocked traffic in the waterway for six days in March despite an ongoing litigation process in an Egyptian court.
The Ever Given, one of the world’s largest container ships, became jammed across the canal in high winds on March 23, halting traffic in both directions and disrupting global trade.
Source: gCaptain, Reuters
Never before has the humble ocean shipping container been this important to American business. If you can’t get one, you can’t move your international cargo — and supply has never been tighter. The cost of global trade is now contingent on how many containers exist, where they are and where they aren’t.
How many containers exist is controlled by China. Virtually every ocean shipping container in the world is built there.
Source: FreightWaves, American Shipper
The global maritime community is calling for enhanced efforts to tackle the rising menace of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea with the adoption of new IMO resolutions on increased collaboration.
The resolutions adopted at a meeting of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) safety committee are centered on the need to strengthen law enforcement, arrest and prosecute pirates and provide security escorts for vessels.
Source: The Maritime Executive
AllRead Machine Learning Technologies (MLT), a startup specialized in computer vision software (Computer Vision), has successfully developed a pilot project at the Port of Barcelona to identify containers and wagons with its artificial intelligence-based technology.
The company created in The Collider, the innovation program of Mobile World Capital Barcelona, uses technology based on artificial intelligence (neural networks) to process images and videos with text and codes, and extract only the desired information. The technology has been developed at the Computer Vision Center of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).
Source: AJOT
The Port of Yantian said it will stop taking in loaded containers as congestion at the export hub in Southern China deteriorates.
The restriction will be implemented from 2200 hrs local time on May 25 to 2359 hrs on May 27 and will only be partly lifted afterwards for export boxes with their vessels expected to arrive at the port within the next four days.
Pickups of import or empty containers, however, will still be allowed over the period.
Source: Lloyd´s Loading List
