News from around the global logistics industry:
Earlier this month, a brand-new 24,004 teu carrier named the Ever Atop made its maiden voyage. It’s the world’s largest boxship — in terms of capacity — to date and is one of 10 new A24 carriers for Evergreen.
It made its maiden voyage less than three-quarters full, causing many to question the need for adding extra capacity at a time when blank sailings are on the rise. Despite this, at least three carriers are moving forward with plans for new ships.
Click to Read: https://theloadstar.com/latest-worlds-largest-containership-sails-light-on-its-maiden-voyage/
Maersk and IBM, who had partnered on the TradeLens project, have announced it will go offline by the end of March 2023.
TradeLens was meant to be a platform that would make it possible for everyone in the industry to share and analyze both data and documents. However, a lack of support and collaboration from industry members has halted the development of of the platform. It seems that not everyone wants to move the industry into the 21st century by digitizing processes and information.
Click to Read: https://splash247.com/tradelens-folds/
The Marine Exchange of Southern California has updated the status of the backlog at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. The ports’ backlogs have finally been cleared to zero ships.
The backlog started building up in October 2020 and peaked in January 2022. Unfortunately, the reason why the ports were able to clear their backlog is because of the increasing number of blank sailings.
Click to Read: https://www.wsj.com/articles/southern-californias-container-ship-backup-ends-11669162514
We’re just weeks away from the commencement of contract talks between the International Longshoremen’s Association and port employers.
According to the ILA, they’re confident that they’ll be able to quickly negotiate a new six-year contract. They’re basing this reasoning on the success of previous negotiations with the US Maritime Alliance in 2018.
Click to Read: https://www.joc.com/ila-sees-no-disputes-port-employers-ahead-2023-contract-talks_20221206.html
There’s been a lot of upheaval and confusion in the supply chain over the last few years and the industry itself has added to it. 2022 saw many regulatory changes, meaning supply chain and logistics organizations had yet another challenge to face in order to stay up-to-date and compliant.
There were new sanctions and regulations that came about because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which included Harmonized Schedule (HS) code restrictions. In June, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) went into effect. And in case that wasn’t enough, there was the added confusion around section 301 tariffs.
Click to Read: https://www.logisticsmgmt.com/article/2022_trade_update_whos_on_first