A fleet commander in the Indonesian Navy has said that about 90 percent of piracy cases in the Malacca Strait area turn out to be bogus claims related to insurance fraud or business competition.
The Stifel Logistics Confidence Index fell into a fifth consecutive month of decline in October. Significantly, the index has now fallen beneath the neutral 50 point mark for the first time since January 2013, with confidence in both the sea freight and airfreight markets plummeting. The Logistics Situation for airfreight was especially bad, declining by 3.2 points to 45.7. The same trends that influenced last month's decline are persisting, with weak emerging market growth, China's financial crisis, and the Chinese shift towards domestic consumption all influencing the trajectory of the index.
Severe shipyard overcapacity in China has prompted the National Development and Report Commission's Jiangsu province to cancel work on 23 projects. The projects included construction of new docks, offshore vessels, facility conversion projects and additional expansions.
Container service reliability across the three main East-West trades reached a new data series high in September, rising by 6.5 percentage points over August to the new record of 79.9 percent, according to Carrier Performance Insight, the online schedule reliability tool provided by Drewry Supply Chain Advisors.
The Panama Canal Authority (ACP) has set a new historical tonnage record, welcoming 340.8 million Panama Canal tons (PC/UMS) through the canal in the 2015 fiscal year.
Import cargo volume at the nation's major retail container ports is expected to increase 3.3 percent this month over the same time last year as retailers make final preparations for the holiday season, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker report from the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates.
Slowing global trade and a bloated orderbook of large vessel capacity mean that container shipping is set for another three years of overcapacity and financial pain, according to the latest Container Forecaster report published by global shipping consultancy Drewry.
The Nicaragua Canal project has been dealt another setback amid reports that construction will not begin until the first quarter of 2016 due to environmental mitigation measures.
The Stifel Logistics Confidence Index saw a fourth consecutive month of decline in September. While the Index, at 51.5, remains above the neutral 50 mark, times may be gloomier that the numbers alone suggest.
