SHIPPING HITS OUT AT SCANT COVERAGE OF HIJACKED CREWS
The world’s leading shipping associations have highlighted the inequality seafarers face as hostages. “The world would be outraged if four airliners were seized and held hostage with innocent souls onboard. Regrettably, there does not seem to be the same response or concern for the four commercial vessels and their crews being held hostage,” states an open letter sent by 16 shipping organisations last week to the United Nations secretary-general, Antonio Guterres. Eleven days ago, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy hijacked a containership belonging to an affiliate of Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer’s Zodiac Maritime and operated by Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC) near the Strait of Hormuz. The 15,000 teu MSC Aries has since been taken to Iranian waters where it is anchored near three other ships Iran has seized in recent months.
THIRD CHANNEL OPENS IN BALTIMORE
A third 6 m deep channel has been established through the downed bridge at Baltimore port providing limited access for commercially essential vessels with officials saying the three shallow channels should get the port back to 15% of pre bridge collapse commercial activity. The aim is to get a deeper channel up and running by the end of this month, and to return the port to full operational capacity by the end of May. The 9,962 teu Dali containership, managed by Synergy and on charter to Maersk, has been pinned down under mangled steel in the Patapsco River since it slammed into a bridge on March 26, killing six road maintenance workers. More than 1,300 tons of steel of what was once Baltimore’s largest bridge have been removed from the Patapsco so far, while salvors have managed to take 120 containers off the stricken Dali.
HAPAG-LLOYD TIPPED TO SEEK OUT ACQUISITION TARGETS.
Hapag-Lloyd is being tipped to seek out further acquisition targets in order to remain in touching distance of the top names in liner shipping. Germany’s top carrier unveiled its medium-term business plans through to 2030, which include an aggressive fleet growth with the line’s CEO, Rolf Habben Jensen claiming the goals were the company’s “most ambitious strategy to date”. The company said yesterday it aims “to cement” its position among the top five global container lines. As it stands, Japan’s Ocean Network Express (ONE) and Taiwan’s Evergreen are snapping at the heels of Hapag-Lloyd’s fifth spot in the global rankings, according to data from Alphaliner. To keep its place in the top five, Hapag-Lloyd could seek acquisitions of smaller, regional rivals, one leading container shipping analyst has suggested. Hapag-Lloyd has absorbed three other carriers over the past decade – CSAV, UASC and NileDutch. In other Hapag-Lloyd news, the Hamburg-headquartered liner and Seaspan have entered into a partnership agreement to retrofit and convert five 10,100 teu containerships powered by conventional MAN S90 engines to dual-fuel engines capable of operating on methanol.
PORTLAND TO CLOSE CONTAINER TERMINAL
The US west coast will bid farewell to a container destination come the end of September. Officials at Portland in Oregon have decided to close and likely repurpose the city’s sole mothballed container terminal this autumn as the facility no longer has any regular customers and has been losing millions of dollars for the past few years. Shippers in the region will likely use Tacoma in Washington for shipments going forward. Manila-headquartered International Container Terminal Services, Inc (ICTSI) originally signed a 25-year deal with Portland back in 2010, paying $4.5m a year after an initial downpayment of $8m. In 2017 it quit the port with no major clients – and considerable labour issues – at its Terminal 6 facility, Oregon’s only container terminal. A court ruled later that the local chapter of the ILWU had sabotaged shipping traffic at the terminal through years of labour slowdowns and stoppages.
