Category Archives: Shipping

The Defence Ministry has signed a contract with Goa Shipyard Ltd (GSL) for the construction of two pollution control vessels for the Indian Coast Guard at a cost of about Rs 583 crore, officials said. The ships are being procured to significantly augment the capability of the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) to respond to incidents of oil spills at the sea and also boost the force’s pollution response mechanism. These two vessels are scheduled for delivery by November 2024 and May 2025 respectively. The defence ministry said the “special role ships” will be indigenously designed, developed and built by GSL.“The acquisition will significantly augment the capability of ICG to respond to oil spill disasters at sea,” it said.

The Union Cabinet on June 16, 2021, approved the Inland Vessel Bill 2021 that will streamline and regulate inland vessels running in the country, said Mansukh Mandaviya, Union Minister Ports, Shipping and Waterways. The Inland Vessels Bill 2021 will replace Inland Vessels Act, 1917. During a press conference, Union Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said that the Inland Vessel Bill, 2021 will promote economical and safe transportation as well as trade through inland waterways. The Bill will make provisions for safe navigation, protection of cargo, and prevent pollution caused during the use of inland vessels, he added. The Inland Water Transport (IWT) in the country is a fuel-efficient and environment-friendly mode of moving around 55 million tonnes of cargo. However, the IWT in India is highly underutilized as compared to developed countries.

The global Covid-19 crisis has highlighted the importance of refrigerated container logistics to keep vital supplies of food and medicines, including vaccines, flowing around the world as nations locked down. While temperature-controlled goods have indeed kept flowing, the pandemic triggered an ongoing cascade of disruptions to the bigger container shipping system that so many perishable producers, exporters, importers and supply chains now rely on. That includes delayed, diverted and rolled shipments, port congestion, landside logjams and shortages and displacement of empty reefer containers due to a clogged global maritime transport pipeline. Real-time visibility and remote control are key drivers for today’s accelerated digitalisation in reefer container operations and the broader cold chain, not only because of the huge global vaccine distribution challenge but perhaps even more so to manage supply chain delays and disruptions impacting cross-border flows of food and other perishables.

The Chennai Port is facing a 25 per cent shortage of containers due to supply and demand gap sparking concern among exporters who now have to pay double rates to send consignments as the pandemic has triggered a worldwide shipping crisis. Regional chairman of Federation of Indian Exporters Organisation Israr Ahmed told Express that the cost of sending a 40-feet container to the United States before Covid was $2,000. “Last year, it rose to $4,500 and now it is priced between $6,200 and $6500. Similarly, for Europe the cost was $1,100 to $1,200 earlier, and it has gone up to 5,500. The price hike is attributed to Covid that has left the global shipping lines with backlogs and delays due to labour shortage, reduced capacity of logistics systems, congestion at ports as well as quarantined cargo,” he added.

Global logistics company DP World welcomes a new weekly India South Gulf (ISG) Service at its Port Terminals in Chennai and Cochin. The new service is jointly operated by a global shipping line – Evergreen Line, and feeder operators – Feedertech and Express Feeders. The New weekly Service will directly connect DP World operated Chennai Container Terminal (CCT) and International Container Transshipment Terminal (ICTT) at Cochin with the Middle East Region. The service commenced with the call of vessel “MV EVER CHANT” operated by Evergreen Line on 2nd June 2021 at DP World Port Terminal Chennai and on 8th June 2021 at DP World Port Terminal Cochin. “MV Hansa Rotenburg” operated by Feedertech was the 2nd vessel deployed on this service which called CCT on 14th June 2021. The service Port rotation is Chennai – Colombo – Cochin – Jebel Ali – Cochin – Colombo – Chennai.

The VO Chidambaranar Port in Thoothukudi has handled the longest windmill blades in a single export consignment that comprised of 24 windmill blades of length 77.50 metres, on Sunday. This consignment marks the longest blades handled through the port so far. The Vessel ‘MV PAC Alcor’, with Length overall (LOA) of 199.9 m was berthed at the Port on June 10 and the loading of the 77.50 m long wind blades were carried out diligently. These blades, which were manufactured at Sriperumbudur and taken to the port by M/s NTC Logistics India Private Ltd, were loaded using the ship’s hydraulic and mobile cranes and were stacked three containers high conforming to safety standards. On Sunday, the vessel set off for Aransas, Texas, US. Port Trust chairman T K Ramachandran said the port was preferred for export of windmill blades and towers. “The size of windmill rotor blades is getting longer and utmost care is being taken regarding the shipment,” he added.

CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd have announced shipment suspensions in several regions across the world. The French shipping group said that all reefer shipments to Cabinda in Angola are suspended due to ongoing congestion, which causes “increasing and extremely irregular” transit times. Additionally, Hapag-Lloyd has confirmed that with immediate effect, it temporarily suspends all imports into East Malaysia ports (Kuching, Sibu, Bintulu, Kota Kinabalu, Labuan, Sandakan, Tawau) due to feeder space limitation. Moreover, the German carrier has announced it has already stopped the acceptance of wood and its allied products including charcoal in Nigeria, due to Nigeria Customs Service E11/2021/Circular No.011 referring to the suspension of export of wood and its allied products.

As the world economy recovers from COVID-19 disruptions and demand for exports rises, container prices at major ports, such as Chennai, Mundra and Nhava Sheva, remain high.The average price of a 20-ft dry container at the Chennai port stood around $1,600 (Rs 116,736, at Rs 72.96 to the dollar) at the end of May, compared to around $1,083 (Rs 79,015) in May 2020. The average price of a 20-ft dry container in Mundra at the end of May stood at around $1,550 compared to $1,163 recorded in June 2020, while for Nhava Sheva in Navi Mumbai, it was at $1,700 in May against $1,075 in June 2020. Demand for exports, especially vaccines, medical equipment like masks, personal protective equipment kits, and oxygen concentrators, has risen in the past few months, shipping companies said. “Many companies are likely to get into bidding wars to extradite their export and import cargo, and this is likely to lead to higher tariffs,” another Mumbai-based shipping analyst said. Demand for white goods has also picked up in the last few months.

German shipping group Hapag-Lloyd has announced the successful conversion of the 15,000 TEU-capacity Brussels Express to run on liquefied natural gas. In completing the conversion, the ship becomes the first “large” containership to make the switch to LNG propulsion, the company says. “The fact that a retrofitting of this scale had never been done before meant that we faced numerous challenges – from the planning to the implementation. We have broken new ground with the conversion, and we will now be testing it very precisely in real-world operation,” says Richard von Berlepsch, Managing Director Fleet Management at Hapag-Lloyd. “Fossil LNG is currently the most promising fuel on the path towards zero emissions. The medium-term goal is to have CO2-neutral shipping operations using synthetic natural gas (SNG).”

Ports in southern China impacted by Covid-19 lockdowns that are further disrupting the global box trade have seen a significant slump in container availability in the last two weeks, according to the latest data from Container xChange. Pearl River Delta port productivity has slumped in recent weeks with container lines citing positive Covid-19 cases for slowing productivity. Yantian and Shekou ports, near Shenzhen, and Nansha port, part of the Guangzhou box hub, have been most affected. All three have seen significant drops in container availability in the last two weeks, according to Container xChange, the world’s leading online platform for the leasing and trading of shipping containers. “Far few empty boxes are arriving back to southern China as container lines skip calls and many shippers will likely face long delays or higher prices for equipment if they can’t avoid using the affected ports,” said Dr Johannes Schlingmeiner. Yantian saw a 19% drop in incoming containers between Week 17 and last week (Week 22). Nansha’s drop in incoming containers over the same period was 16.4%, while at Shekou the plunge was 29.6%.