A jacket via Cherbourg 
The jacket construction that is to support the electrical substation of the Fécamp offshore wind farm has just entered the port of Cherbourg. This jacket is 60 m high and weighs 1,200 t. It was towed on the Stralsund barge, which itself is 90 m long and 32 m wide. Installed... more
Spanish Ports on pre-pandemic levels
From January to April 2022, the Spanish ports (Puertos del Estado) handled a total of 180.3 million t of goods, an uptick of 5.4% compared to the four first months of 2021 and almost on the same level as in 2019 (-0.8%). All commodities recorded significant increases except... more
Military transport for the Middle East
In May 2022, Jacksonville Port Authority’s (Jaxport) Blount Island Marine Terminal handled cargo for the South Carolina-based 841st transportation battalion and the Virginia-based 597th transportation brigade. The vessels loaded approximately 750 pieces of military... more
First electric push boat christened
After a naming ceremony held in Berlin’s Westhafen, “Elektra”, the first emission-free pusher tug, is now ready for action. After almost two years of construction at shipyard Hermann Barthel in Derben (Germany), the first push boat in which battery-electric propulsion is... more
Stable deterioration of reliability
The Copenhagen-based maritime consultancy Sea-Intelligence reports that global schedule reliability is continuing its trend of 2021. In April 2022, schedule reliability declined further by -1.3 percentage points compared to March and was down by -4.7 percentage points compared... more
Karachi: new gateway for Uzbekistan
It is a first for the Pakistan International Container Terminal (Pict), an affiliate of the International Container Terminal Services (ICTSI) operating in the Port of Karachi. It has just handled the first export shipment from Uzbekistan. The cargo was transported by land to the... more
Hapag-Lloyd now really African
The deal is officially closed: Hapag-Lloyd is taking over the container liner business of German carrier Deutsche Afrika-Linien (DAL). The carriers had agreed on the framework agreement in March 2022, and the transaction has now been approved by all responsible antitrust... more
Which cure for the maritime crisis?
Four government advisors and decision makers representing four global regions were present on Fiata's panel entitled “Moving Forward: What are the Solutions to the Maritime Crisis”, a side event of the Fiata HQ Meeting in Geneva on 20 May 2022. Together, they examined how... more
ONE also expanding its fleet
Another round of ten Very Large Container Ships (VLCS) is in the pipeline. The Ocean Network Express (ONE), headquartered in Singapore, recently inked two ship building contracts at the same time. One contract was signed with Hyundai Heavy Industries, the second with Nihon... more
New hybrids on Grimaldi's seas
It was of course Malta that hosted the breaking of the champagne bottle. The christening ceremony for “Eco Malta”, the latest ro-ro vessel delivered to the Grimaldi Group, took place in the port of Valletta. It is the sixth unit of a dozen hybrid sister ships belonging to the... more