Jupiter Sea and Air Service Pvt Ltd: UPDATED DAILY SHIPPING NEWS FOR FRIDAY APRIL 08, 2016

Kandla port rises to the occasion, reaches 100-mt mark in cargo handling

Live Mint
India’s state-owned Kandla Port Trust created history by handling 100 million tonnes (mt) of cargo in the year ended March, becoming the first government-run port in India (there are 12 of them) to achieve this feat. It is only the second Indian port to hit the three-figure mark after privately-run Mundra port, located just 60km away on the Gulf of Kutch. Mundra, India’s biggest commercial port by volume, clocked 100 mt two years ago. So, what makes Kandla, located in the western state of Gujarat, tick? At a water depth of 12.5 metres, Kandla can hardly lay claim to be a deep-water port where bigger ships can call. Private firms have largely stayed away from investing money to set up cargo-handling berths through the so-called public-private partnership (PPP) route at the port.

Railways set to lower freight tariffs soon

Business Line
Facing consistent loss of freight traffic due to lack of demand, the Indian Railways plans a slew of measures to win back cargo from road transport by lowering tariff in the short-distance segment as well as port congestion charges. “To generate more volumes, we will be rationalising port congestion charges and tariffs in the short-distance segment shortly,” Mohammed Jamshed, Member-Traffic, Railway Board, told, adding that this will be for incremental traffic. The measures are being planned in the wake of difficulties in meeting the freight target for the last fiscal due to lack of demand. In 2015-16, the Railways moved 1,105.5 million tonnes of freight, as per initial estimates, which is 1.5 million tonnes lower than the revised estimates of 1,107 million tonnes, and 84.5 million tonnes lower than the budget target of 1,190 million tonnes.

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Direct Chennai-Yangon service gets underway

JOC
Singapore-based carrier Continental Shipping Line has introduced a direct container service between Chennai, India, and Yangon, Myanmar, to capture expected trade growth on the route. The intra-Asia service began with the call of the Pathein Star at DP World-operated Chennai Container Terminal on Thursday. The 167-meter (548 feet) Pathein Star has a capacity to load 1,468 twenty-foot-equivalent units, DP World Chennai said in a trade announcement. The port rotation is as follows: Yangon, Myanmar; Chennai, India; Colombo, Sri Lanka and back to Yangon. “The highlight of this service would be the direct link created between South India to Yangon, thus boosting the trade between the two regions,” DP World Chennai CEO K.K. Krishnadas said in a statement.

Chennai port offers discount in wharfage for edible oil

Business Line
Chennai Port Trust (ChPT) is offering volume-based discount on wharfage charges to bulk edible oil importers/exporters for foreign vessel on a trial basis in the current financial year. This is based on a recommendation from Boston Consulting Group, which said that edible oil handled at the port declined during the last five years from 2011. The consultants recommended that the ChPT reduce its charges to attract additional volume to the port, according to a source. The discount in wharfage charges ranging from 15 to 25 per cent is based on volume of cargo over a threshold based on the total volume handled during the past three financial years. The threshold level was taken as 80 per cent of the average cargo volume handled in the last three years with a minimum of 20,000 tonnes a year.

WTO trims world trade growth forecasts for 2016

Financial Express
The World Trade Organization (WTO) on Thursday trimmed its 2016 global trade growth forecast by 1.1 percentage points, saying a slowdown in China and broad market volatility continued to weigh on growth. The multilateral trade body has now predicted that global trade would rise by 2.8% in 2016, lower than its previous forecast of a 3.9% expansion announced in September last year. This will be the fifth straight year of trade growth below 3%, which is also much lower than the average annual expansion of 5% since 1990, showed the WTO data. “Risks to this forecast are mostly on the downside, including a sharper-than-expected slowing of the Chinese economy, worsening financial market volatility, and exposure of countries with large foreign debts to sharp exchange rate movements,” the trade body said.

VOC port cargo handling touches new high

Business Line
VO Chidambaranar port in Tuticorin handled record cargo volume of 36.85 million tonnes (MT) in the financial year 2015-16. It surpassed the previous year’s 32.41 MT by 13.70 per cent. The port also surpassed the Shipping Ministry’s target of 36.80 MT by 0.14 per cent, says a press release. The increase in cargo handling was possible due to growth in volume of import cargo like coal, fertiliser, copper concentrate, containerised cargo, lime stone, liquid ammonia and POL products. On the export front, there was increased handling of construction materials, containerised cargoes, caustic soda lye, machinery and fly ash. Out of the total handling, imports accounted for 27.37 MT, a 14.09 per cent increase over the previous year’s 23.99 MT. Exports were 9.48 MT (8.42 MT), an increase of 12.59 per cent. The release said that the port handled 14.80 MT of coal, a growth of 7.25 per cent.

New IBIA Chairman Talks Better Bunker Practices, Ethics, Enforcement of Bunker Regs, Membership Growth

Ship&Bunker
Improved global bunkering practices, the fair enforcement of bunker regulations, and growing its membership are some of the key areas of focus for the International Bunker Industry Association (IBIA) this coming year, IBIA's new Chairman Robin Meech has told Ship & Bunker. He officially replaced outgoing chairman Jens Maul Jorgensen effective April 1, 2016. Meech said the role and value of IBIA is constantly changing, reflecting the industry it represents; "It provides a balanced view taking into account the feedback from its membership which represents all facets of bunkering, not only buyers and sellers but also the multitude of support sectors. "This adds value to what the Association has to offer to its membership whether it is lobbying on bunker issues at IMO, providing input into improving bunkering guidelines for adoption by ports or making concrete input to ISO committees."

India needs wide-ranging reform for export performance to turn robust

Economic Times
Trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman knows her onions when it comes to trade. But that does not mean that she can do much about the steady fall in India’s exports for one year and a quarter. Weakness in the global economy is not something an Indian trade minister can remedy. Nor are the problems in infrastructure, inverted duties for components and finished goods in several sectors and afragmented domestic market that creates long delays at state boundaries when a container wends its way from factory to port amenable to solution at her end. India needs wide-ranging reform across several sectors for export performance to turn robust. The impact of declining exports can be exaggerated. Both petroleum and gems and jewellery, two big sectors of Indian exports, have a large import component, which also has come down sharply.

Adani-operated Hazira Terminal in India doubles annual throughput

JOC
The volume of containers handled by Adani Hazira Container Terminal, a privately-operated alternative gateway on India’s west coast, nearly doubled in fiscal year 2015-16, which ended March 31, driven by new service additions. Port statistics released by the company show throughput jumped 96 percent from 154,374 20-foot-equivalent units in fiscal 2014-15 to 302,755 TEUs. “This is a remarkable achievement by the AHCT team,” the private operator said in a written statement. AHCT is owned and operated by Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone, which has a clutch of cargo facilities across India, including its flagship Mundra. Hazira Port, which is about 120 nautical miles north of Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, began container handling in early 2013.

S Balaji Arunkumar new Kolkata Port Trust deputy chairman

Economic Times
S Balaji Arunkumar, An IRTS officer of 1997 batch, has taken over as deputy chairman of Kolkata Dock System under Kolkata Port Trust (KoPT) with effect from April 4. He was senior general manager of Container Corporation of India, Chennai, before assuming his new charge. R P S Kahlon lost his job as chairman of KoPT after he was arrested on alleged graft charges on March 9 from a hotel in the city. He had allegedly received bribe from a private firm that handles containers at Kolkata Dock System ( KDS). M T Krishna Babu, the chairman of Visakhapatnam Port Trust, has taken over as the new chairman of KoPT as an additional charge.

Shifting allegiances in the container sector

Lloyds List
Alliances are an everyday part of container shipping, and the shuffling of relationships brought on by mergers within the sector will have real world implications. China Cosco Container Shipping Lines is in a novel position straddling two of the industry’s mega-alliances, a situation expected to continue until the end of the year. The double alliance arrangement is a consequence of the China Shipping and Cosco merger; the acquisition of NOL by CMA CGM brings further impetus to change the ties that currently bind competitors. In this month’s Containerisation International, SeaIntel chief executive Alan Murphy ran a few possible line combinations to see how the changes could affect market shares on main trade routes. China Cosco stated it is looking to grow through the alliances it chooses, its general manager said last week, “The future box liner industry is not only a competition among individual players but also one among alliances.”

OSC’s New Feeder Service Links Oman to UAE

Marine Link
Oman Shipping Company (OSC) is launching a new freight service linking all Omani ports to the United Arab Emirates by mid-April, 2016, in a move that aims to boost trade links. OSC’s new fortnightly Oman Express Service will be the first freight feeder operator to connect all Omani ports. It will be run by OSC subsidiary Oman Container Lines (OCL). OSC chief executive Tarik Mohamed Al Junaidi said the new service will be cheaper and faster than the road transport which currently handles all freight to the interiors. The main objective of OSC, one of the Gulf’s biggest ship operators, is to connect Oman with the rest of the world with a regular service linking the Omani ports of Salalah, Duqm and Sohar, with the UAE. The state-owned company will be the focal point for all customers and the Oman Express Service will use its own multipurpose vessel to carry containers,

India’s future is sea-facing

Gateway House
For centuries, the psyche of India has been that of a landlocked country. This is partly due to its history, recent wars and the resultant political thought and defence structures. But now, India has to face the truth: turn to the sea or face a very constricted future. The reason is simple and known to most people through this statistic: two-thirds of planet earth is water and 90% of the world’s trade flows through the ocean. What lies beneath IS becoming increasingly contested. This contest is sharpening thanks to multiple shifts in the world, both economic and political. The biggest of these is the ascent of China simultaneous with the U.S.’s turning inwards and the consequent shifts in the world’s geopolitical architecture – a structure that has largely remained unchanged since the end of the second world war, and which has entrenched western interests.

Maersk continues to grow operations

Business times
For the Maersk Group, a conglomerate of worldwide businesses focusing on the shipping and energy industries, Singapore is the only place outside Denmark where all its business units are represented. The group operates in some 130 countries and is headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark. Maersk has been established in Singapore since 1975 and has grown its operations here substantially in tandem with Singapore's growth as an international maritime centre. It is the top Singapore Registry of Ships (SRS) client with about 140 vessels and the Singapore office operates over 100 of its vessels. Significantly, despite the current gloom and doom in the global shipping industry, the number of Maersk employees in Singapore remains stable at around 650.

Ships and shipbuilding in India through a Sino-Indian prism

CIMSEC
The year 2022 arrived as a harried harbinger of tidings of war and woe in the Indo-Pacific — a geo-strategic region central to the security calculus of both, regional and extra-regional players. From the United States of America to Japan, strategic advisers and military practitioners began reading-up their several carefully-prepared contingency plans, each focused upon the increasingly violent writhing of the Chinese dragon. Although the danger-signs of a precipitous economic decline within the People’s Republic had appeared even before 2015, the sheer speed of contraction of the Chinese economy took the world completely by surprise. The internal repercussions within China were so extreme that news of the violent unrest within the Middle Kingdom easily transcended the efforts made by the CCP to keep matters under wraps.

Asia Dry Bulk-Capesize Rates Likely to Stay High

Marine Link
Freight rates for large capesize dry cargo ships on key Asian routes are likely to hold steady next week near four-month highs if owners continue to reactivate idle tonnage on upbeat cargo demand, ship brokers said on Thursday. "If more idled ships are put back into the market there may not be the support from cargo demand to push rates up any further," said a Shanghai-based capesize ship broker. "Rates from Western Australia to China are still below $4 per tonne. Owners are offering $7 per tonne for Brazil to China, while charterers are bidding $6.50 per tonne," the Shanghai broker said. That followed a flurry of cargo fixtures by miners, including BHP Billiton and Vale, that pushed rates to the highest level since mid-December. That prompted some shipowners, ship brokers highlighted Zodiac Maritime Agencies, to put idled tonnage back into the market this week.

Jupiter Sea and Air Service Pvt Ltd

Friday 8 April 2016

UPDATED DAILY SHIPPING NEWS FOR FRIDAY APRIL 08, 2016