Two major safety campaigns have just been launched, one from an international body representing freight forwarders and the other from a major container shipping line.

The U.S. Coast Guard announced the acceptance of nine ballast water treatment systems as Alternate Management Systems (AMS) in compliance with the service's March 2012 final rule for Standards for Living Organisms in Ships' Ballast Water Discharged in U.S. waters.

By recently taking charge of the Gwadar port in Pakistan, China has increased its presence in Southern Asia's port sector, much to the concern of the Indian Government.

Managing month-to-month changes to services and schedules is now a constant battle for container operators as they strive to keep the spot market from imploding in the current weak demand environment, according to Drewry's latest Container Forecaster report.

U.S. import shipment volume for March, measured in TEUs, decreased by 15 percent from February and by 12.5 percent from March of 2012. While February imports were unusually high, March imports were unusually low. In fact, imports for the month of March have not been this low since 2009.

Construction has begun on a three-year $1.6bn overhaul of the largest container port in Australia, with Victorian state government saying the work is necessary to avoid capacity constraints and adding that it will create around 1,100 jobs.

CMA CGM is set to open an inland terminal near Abu Ghraib, in the Baghdad Governorate, in June. The shipping group will exclusively manage and operate the facility, which it says will be Iraq's only dry port.