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Balboa, Jul 4 -- Panama Canal Port Condition report for Jul 4. Projected backlog at 0001 hrs: Fifty-one vessels today, 47 tomorrow and 44 on Jul 6. There are 29 vessels arriving today, 30 tomorrow and 42 on Jul 6. There are 33 vessels scheduled for today and 33 for tomorrow. Estimated delays for vessels without reservation/non-booked: Northbound: All types of vessels, two days. Southbound: All types of vessels, one to two days

Nine vessels at anchor off Port Walcott, waiting to load iron ore

Two identical 37-metre, 459-passenger catamarans have been completed by Wight Shipyard Co (WSC). The Incat Crowther-designed vessels will be transported to Cancun, Mexico, for Ultramar early next month.

The first paperless, instantly financed and fully door-to-door tracked container made its way from Korea to the warehouse of Samsung SDS in Tilburg via Port of Rotterdam on blockchain-based platform DELIVER. ABN AMRO, Port of Rotterdam and Samsung SDS demonstrated that blockchain technology enables interoperability, and that integrated container tracking and tracing, required cargo documentation processing and financing can all be done in a trusted, secure and paperless way.

South Carolina Ports Authority (SCPA), Southeast's deepwater port, said that five rubber-tired gantry (RTG) cranes arrived at Wando Welch Terminal to further modernize operations. The Port has received 14 of the 24 new cranes ordered for the Wando terminal; the terminal currently has 52 RTGs overall. Meanwhile, SCPA reported its strongest May on record, with 204,457 twenty-foot equivalent container units (TEUs) handled last month.

The Port of Brownsville is closer to deepening the Brownsville Ship Channel after receiving a key permit June 6 from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to advance the Brazos Island Harbor Channel Improvement Project (BIH) to its construction phase.

A Dutch shipping line will open up Waterford port to new international trade routes when it commences a weekly service on the Waterford to Rotterdam route which will act as a deep-sea feeder for Irish importers and exporters. BG Freight Line, in partnership with global shipping giant Maersk, is to commence the service on July 6th to support industry in the southeast. Effectively the move will allow goods travelling from Waterford to continue through Rotterdam to other ports such as Shanghai, whereas previously goods for destinations beyond Europe would typically have shipped from Dublin.

A press report, dated Jul 3, states: The 24-hour strike by seamen on Jul 3, has left Greek ferries and other passenger boats tied up in port, stranding tourists and Greeks heading for vacation and leaving many islands cut off for the day. The PNO seamen?s union called Wednesday?s strike to demand salary increases as part of collective wage agreements. Dozens of inhabited Greek islands don?t have airports and are accessible only by sea. The passenger shipping business association SEEN, with which the seamen?s union had been negotiating, had expressed surprise when the strike was announced in late June, saying it offered a two percent wage increase for 2019 on top of a retroactive two percent increase for 2018. It said the offer, along with staff increases, was ?beyond our actual capabilities during a particularly difficult time? with 50% fuel cost increases.

Twelve vessels at anchor off Dampier, waiting to load iron ore.

On 27 June the Corsican Parliament officially approved the upcoming 15-month public ferry service between Marseille and the island, starting on 1 October 2019.

In one of the biggest pushbacks against Chinese president Xi Jinping’s Belt Road Initiative Tanzania has suspended the construction of the $10bn Bagamoyo port project, citing the onerous financial conditions put in place by Beijing. The project, which broke ground four years ago and was set to be run by China Merchants Holding International, would have been the largest port in East Africa. Tanzania’s president John Magufuli has accused the Chinese project backers of presenting “exploitative and awkward” terms in exchange for financing. Chinese financiers set “tough conditions that can only be accepted by mad people,” Magufuli told local media. “They told us once they build the port, there should be no other port to be built all the way from Tanga to Mtwara south,” Magufuli told a delegation of business people at State House in Dar es Salaam earlier this month. “They want us to give them a guarantee of 33 years and a lease of 99 years, and we should not question whoever comes to invest there once the port is operational. They want to take the land as their own but we have to compensate them for drilling construction of that port,” he said. Magufuli also said the new Bagamoyo port risked undermining the ongoing $522m expansion of Dar es Salaam port that would enable it to triple its current capacity when complete by the end of this year. Source : Splash247

Container throughput continues to grow in Rotterdam. Following a record year in 2018 and a record quarter in 2019, April of this year was the best month ever for the Port of Rotterdam. 13.6 million tonnes of container freight was handled in April 2019. The previous record month was August 2018 (13.2 million tonnes). Measured in TEU, the standard unit for containers, April 2019 was the second-best month ever, with 1.3 million TEU, just a fraction lower than the record month of August 2018.

Matson, Inc., a leading U.S. carrier in the Pacific, and General Dynamics NASSCO shipyard christened the largest combination container/roll-on, roll-off (“con-ro”) ship ever built in the United States in a ceremony at the NASSCO shipyard in San Diego, CA on Saturday, June 15. The new vessel is named ‘Lurline,’ an iconic name in Matson’s long history, dating to the construction of Captain William Matson’s first ship of that name in 1887. Four more ships were given the name in subsequent years; this vessel will be the sixth. The new Lurline is the first of two new ships being built for Honolulu-based Matson by NASSCO at a total cost of approximately $500 million for the pair, and the third of four new vessels that Matson will put into service during 2018, 2019 and 2020. Named in honor of the ocean deity revered in the native Hawaiian culture, Matson’s two “Kanaloa Class” vessels under construction at the NASSCO shipyard are being built on a 3,500 TEU* vessel platform.

Federal authorities have seized approximately 16.5 tons of cocaine from a ship at the Port of Philadelphia, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania tweeted Tuesday. The drugs were seized on a ship at the Packer Marine Terminal on the Delaware River. The U.S. Attorney’s office said the drug bust marks the largest drug seizure in the history of the district. The drugs have an estimated street value of approximately $1 billion the office said. The amount of drugs would rank in among the top drug seizures in U.S. history, including 21 tons of cocaine that was seized in California and 14 tons of cocaine in Texas both in 1989, Reuters reported. At least some crew members on board the ship have been arrested, the Attorney’s office said in another tweet.

APM Terminals second terminal in Morocco, MedPort Tangier was inaugurated this week. Part of the Tanger Med Port complex, it has an annual capacity of 5 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalents). With this new capacity, Morocco is establishing itself as one of the most important transhipment locations in the world. Tanger Med Port is already ranked as the leading African port and is amongst the world’s top 50 container ports due to its prime location along key trade lanes and increasing cargo flows, to and from Africa. The construction of the state-of-the-art APM Terminals MedPort Tangier facility took two years and a total investment of USD 800m. This new transhipment terminal is designed, constructed and operated by APM Terminals, and will join existing hub facilities servicing Maersk and its partners. Built utilizing the latest technology, the terminal is set to be one of the most efficient and safest in the world.

Thirty-eight vessels at anchor off Port Hedland, waiting to load iron ore.

In a ruling last week, the Court of Justice of the EU rejected an appeal presented by Fred. Olsen S.A. over a sentence dictated by the General Courts of the EU in March 2018, whereby the continued exclusive use of the Port of Agaete on the Island of Gran Canary, by Fred. Olsen, constituted a subsidy by the Government of the Canary Islands to said shipping line.

Tangier will today celebrate the opening of the largest container port in capacity terms in the whole of the Mediterranean, something that will bring enormous competition to the likes of Algericas just 25 nautical miles away across the Strait of Gibraltar. The $1.6bn expansion of Tanger Med port, located to the east of the Moroccan city of Tangier, due to be unveiled today will create Africa’s largest port with an annual capacity of 9.5m teu. The port is operated by APM Terminals, Eurogate and a local firm.

Samsung C&T Corp., a construction unit under Samsung Group, said Tuesday it has won a US$179.5 million project to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in Vietnam. Under the deal with Petrovietnam Gas Corp., Samsung C&T and Vietnamese firm PTSC will build the Southeast Asian country’s first LNG terminal, in the coastal area 70 kilometers southeast of Ho Chi Minh City for 40 months. The project also calls for the construction of LNG tanks and other related facilities, according to Samsung C&T. Samsung C&T has a 61 percent stake in the project. Source: Yonhap

International Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI) is poised to further strengthen its position as a global ports operator giant as it looks to add the Port of Kribi in Central Africa in its extensive portfolio. In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, ICTSI said it has been declared by the Port Autonome de Kribi on June 14 as the preferred bidder for the concession of the development, operation, and maintenance of the multi-purpose terminal of the Port of Kribi.