container shipping

To view more FreightWaves infographics, click here. Image by Alexander Kliem from Pixabay

Chalk up yet another record for ocean shipping. More vessels traded hands in the first half of this year than in any other six-month stretch — yet another industry signal that's flashing green. It's not just container ships. An exceptionally high number of tankers and bulkers were sold as well....

The Port of New Orleans has issued a request for proposals for program management and controls services for development of its new $1.5 billion container terminal. The container terminal, which will be called the Louisiana International Terminal, will be capable of handling 2 million twenty-foot...

HMM announced Tuesday that it will pay $1.57 billion for 12 container ships that each can carry 13,000 twenty-foot equivalent units.  The ocean carrier said it had signed the newbuild contracts with Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering and Hyundai Heavy Industries, both located in South...

Multi-month container-ship charters continue to be signed at jaw-dropping rates above $100,000 per day. The market is getting even tighter, pushing charter rates and durations higher still. Even so, there's something to be said for shipowners taking a few chips off the table — and some are. To...

In a sign of just how frenzied the container market has become, a freight forwarder is reportedly paying $135,000 per day for a short-term charter of the S Santiago, a container ship with a capacity of 5,060 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs). "Charter rates for short employment … have gone out...

The Georgia Ports Authority (GPA) reported this week the Port of Savannah had achieved its busiest April on record and its second-busiest month ever. The busiest occurred just one month earlier. The Port of Savannah handled 466,633 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in April, a 38% increase — or...

As the saying goes: "Never let a good crisis go to waste." Before COVID struck, AP Moller-Maersk embarked on a transformation to become a global end-to-end logistics provider. The pandemic created an unexpected and unprecedented surge in cargo demand — which Maersk is now using to accelerate its...

The number of container ships at anchor off California is down from the all-time high, but that doesn't necessarily mean the U.S. import boom is winding down. "If you think the worst is over, be cautious," warned Michael Braun, vice president of customer solutions at Norway-based Xeneta, a company...

In ocean shipping, present success often breeds future failure. Across the decades, freight-rate spikes have spurred newbuilding sprees, wiping out freight rates. Which brings us to today: Container freight rates are spiking and container-ship newbuild orders are surging at yards in China, South...

The spotlight has focused on the armada of container ships stuck in California's San Pedro Bay, awaiting berths in Los Angeles and Long Beach. But that's not the whole story: Anchorages are bloated with box ships elsewhere along the West Coast, in Oakland and British Columbia, and on the East Coast...

Could today's unprecedented boom in containerized imports just keep going year-round? Right through Chinese New Year in February? Through the second quarter, then the fall peak — and all the way into 2022? Could the already overwhelmed global trade network stay stuck at its ceiling until next year...

"The ships are 100% full. The containers are 100% full. You can't get a container built. You can't pick up a ship from the spot market. The whole container-shipping cycle is at absolutely full pulse," exclaimed Jeremy Nixon, CEO of Ocean Network Express (ONE), the world's fifth-largest container...

Containers have wrestled the ocean-shipping headlines away from tankers and bulkers as stratospheric China-to-California box rates approach $4,000 per forty-foot equivalent unit (FEU). Container shipping, declares a glowing new report by Fearnleys Securities, is "The Unsung Hero." How can...

The always cool and collected Gene Seroka nearly got fired up when talking about Southern California ports' loss of market share during a press conference on cargo volumes. Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, gave a more than three-minute response when asked Wednesday about what...