Vale had commissioned at least 35 VLOCs, as they are known in the shipping industry, to be built over the past decade by Asian shipbuilders, some Chinese.
The miner intended to cut its freight costs for shipping ore to China, the world’s largest producer of steel and consumer of iron ore, to better compete with rival Australian miners.
But until now, China has banned such large vessels that can carry more than 400,000 tonnes from entering its ports. Analysts expect the new deal between Vale and the Chinese shipbuilding industry to eventually facilitate the opening of mainland ports to receive ore from the VLOCs.
In the meantime Vale has pushed ahead with developing offloading projects in the Philippines and Malaysia, where ore is transferred from the large carriers on to smaller vessels before making the final leg to Chinese ports.
The VLOCs have successfully unloaded ore in Japanese, South Korean and European ports.
“We have asked the ports to carry out techno-economic feasibility studies for deepening the channel to 18m,” a shipping ministry spokesman said. The plan potentially creates a huge business opportunity for overseas dredging contractors because local firms lack capability to undertake such capital dredging projects
Last week, Jawaharlal Nehru port, India’s busiest container port, located near Mumbai decided to appoint a consultant to prepare a detailed project report (DPR) for deepening the channel to 18m from the existing 14m. Ennore Port has appointed Indian Ports Association (IPA) to write a DPR for the channel deepening work.
Indian dredging firms are mostly focused on maintenance dredging and the few Indian-flagged cutter suction dredgers in operation are not be able to do the job.
“Beyond a certain level of capability, you have to depend on big equipment which is not available with Indian companies today; they have to come from outside,” a dredging industry executive said.
Most of the Indian government-owned ports have a depth under 10m, except for a few ports that have depths of 14m. Only one port – Vizag – has a depth of 20m and that is in its outer harbour.
The depths at major ports are clearly inadequate to handle higher capacity ships such as capesize and container ships with a capacity to carry 14,000 standard containers that are increasingly being put to use worldwide.
Inadequate depths at India’s major ports entails extra time and costs for moving goods as a large proportion of cargos originating and bound for India are routed through transhipment ports such as Singapore and Colombo because of a lack of capable ports to handle bigger ships.
In January-August 2014, the port of Gdansk (Poland) handled 20389601 t of cargo (+5.7%, year-on-year), the stevedoring company says. Transshipment of grain climbed by 25.8% to 1037251 t, general cargo and timber – by 6% to 7429415 t, other bulk cargo (aggregates, sulphur, ore) – up 37.3% to 2502119 t, coal transshipment fell 1.5 times to 2115580 t, transshipment of liquid fuel increased by 15% to 7305236 t. The port of Gdansk is a major international transportation hub situated in the central part of the southern Baltic coast.
Besides handling bulk cargoes (oil, coal, metal ores) the port provides a number of line services linking it with the ports of the Baltic Sea and Western Europe (primarily ferry, construction and ro-ro lines). In 2013, the port handled 30259295 t of cargo.
It is the most important and biggest Lithuanian transport hub, connecting sea, land and railway routes from East to West. The port’s throughput (including Butinge terminal) made 33.42 mln t in 2013.
5%), non-ferrous metal – to 2.1 mln t (-19.6%). Transshipment of liquid bulk cargo hit 223.2 mln t (+1.0%) including 126.5 mln t of crude oil (-7.8%), 86.1 mln t of oil products (+15.1%) and 8.2 mln t of liquefied gas (+12.3%). Transshipment of export cargo totaled 328.4 mln t (+8.3%, year-on-year), import cargo – 29.2 mln t (-5.2%), transit cargo – 32.4 mln t (+4.6%), coastal trade cargo – 22.4 mln t (-1.3%). Operators of the Arctic Basin terminals handled 23.4 mln t of cargo (-24.9%) including 17.0 mln t of dry cargo (+3.7%) and 6.4 mln t of liquid bulk cargo (down 2.3 times).
The port of Murmansk handled 15.1 mln t (-26.2%), Arkhangelsk – 2.6 mln t (-19.8%), Varandei – 3.9 mln t (+10.4%). The ports of the Baltic Basin handled 149.8 mln t (+5.5%) including 59.0 mln t of dry cargo (+9.4%) and 90.8 mln t of liquid bulk cargo (+3.2%). The port of Ust-Luga handled 49.4 mln t (+22.3%), Big Port St. Petersburg – 41.0 mln t (+8.3%), Vysotsk – 12.1 mln t (+9.9%), Vyborg – 1.1 mln t (+24.5%), Kaliningrad – 9.0 mln t (-0.4%), Primorsk – 37.3 mln t (-12.4%). Throughput of Azov – Black Sea ports climbed to 125.6 mln t (+10.8%) including 46.2 mln t of dry cargo (+18.3%) and 79.4 mln t of liquid bulk cargo (+6.
8%). The port of Novorossiysk handled 81.4 mln t (+8.2%), Tuapse – 14.5 mln t (+31.7%), Taman – 6.8 mln t (+26.2%), Kavkaz – 6.2 mln t (+30.3%), Azov – 4.0 mln t (+22.3%), Yeisk – 2.4 mln t (+11.3%), Taganrog – 1.9 mln t (+4.1%), Rostov-on-Don – 6.8 mln t (+0.2%), Temryuk – 1.3 mln t (-4.0%). The ports of the Caspian Basin handled 5.2 mln t (-4.4%) including 2.2 mln t of dry cargo (+5.0%) and 3.0 mln t of liquid bulk cargo (-10.2%). Throughput of the port of Makhachkala fell by 7.0%, Olya – dropped by 7.7%, Astrakhan – increased by 1.8%. The ports of Far East Basin handled 108.4 mln t of cargo (+13.
2%) including 64.9 mln t of dry cargo (+17.4%), 43.5 mln t of liquid bulk cargo (+7.5%). Port Vostochny handled 38.1 mln t (+18.6%), Vanino – 17.2 mln t (+6.6%), Nakhodka – 14.2 mln t (+16.8%), Prigorodnoye – 10.9 mln t (+1.6%), Vladivostok – 10.5 mln t (+10.2%), De-Castri – 5.2 mln t (+16.3%), Posiet – 4.8 mln t (+30.5%). Association of Commercial Sea Ports (ASOP) set up in 1987 unites over 50 organizations and enterprises of Russia’s maritime transport. ASOP comprises commercial seaports, forwarding and agency companies, scientific research institutes and marine educational institutions. Operational results of Russian port sector are based on statistics reports and cover all stevedoring companies operating in the Russian Federation.
Compared to the same month last year, freight turnover in August 2014 increased by 4% to 191.4 billion tariff ton-kilometres. Freight turnover taking into account empty wagon runs in August 2014 cmpared to August 2013 increased by 4.3% and amounted to 245.4 billion ton-km.
According to the latest figures, loading volumes in January-August 2014, amounted to 808.4 million tons, 1.4% less than during the same period of 2013.
The railways shipped the following goods. The figures in brackets show the percentage change compared to January-August 2013:
coal – 202.3 m tons (+0.2%);
coke – 7.6 m tons (-0.1%);
oil and petroleum products – 170.3 m tons (+2.1%);
iron and manganese ores – 71.7 m tons (-2.2%);
ferrous metals – 47.4 m tons (+0.8%);
ferrous metal scrap – 10.6 m tons (-1.7%);
chemical and mineral fertilisers – 33.3 m tons (+7.1%);
cement – 22.6 m tons (-6.8%);
timber – 26.3 m tons (+9%);
grain and milled products – 9.8 m tons (+44.3%);
construction materials – 96.7 m tons (-17%);
non-ferrous ores and sulphur feedstock – 13 m tons (-6.1%);
chemicals and soda – 17 m tons (-3.7%);
industrial feedstock and moulded materials – 23.2 m tons (+5.2%).
Freight turnover since the beginning of 2014 amounted to 1514.3 billion tariff ton-km, an increase of 5.5%, and to 1950.9 billion ton-km taking into account empty wagon runs, a rise of 6.1%.
Norway is sitting on a gold mine of 10 billion barrels of oil equivalent in untapped discovered hydrocarbon resources that could generate massive revenue of $106 billion but significant technical and commercial obstacles are barring the way to the glittering prize, according to Wood Mackenzie.
COSCO Pacific, the terminal operating unit of Cosco Group, said its profits fell 74% year on year to $146.8M due to lack of one-off gains from disposal of a subsidiary last year.
Excluding the one-off items, COSCO Pacific’s profits rose 2% y/y to $146.8M on container throughput increase, a stock filing of the company said today.
Revenues gained 11% y/y to $440.2M during the same period. The company’s total throughput increased 10% y/y to 32.5Mteu, with the equity throughput up 13% y/y to 9.3Mteu.
For its container leasing, management and sale business, the profit of the segment fell 30% y/y as its box fleet increased 3% y/y to 1.9Mteu. During the period, COSCO Pacific added two berths at Asia Container Terminals in Hong Kong and two berths at Dongjiakou Ore Terminal in Qingdao, China.
As of 30 June, the company was operating 106 container berths, with a total annual handling capacity of 64.3Mteu and was operating 13 bulk cargo berths with a total annual handling capacity of 46.1M tonnes.
In the second half of the year, the group’s container throughput is expected to grow steadily, giving a boost to terminals business profits, it added.
– How do you assess the impact of sanctions on the transport and logistics market of Russia? Do you predict whether there will be an increase or decrease in the transport of containers, Ro-Ro cargo through Russian seaports in this situation?
– I believe in a situation of limited imports as a result of EU and USA sanctions, including entry of dual-purpose products into Russia, or restrictions on the import of certain food products in Russia, some part of the cargo flow will be excluded out of the business now. Substitution of imported goods with their own production – it is not a momentary process. Therefore there will be switching from one trade to another; some routes (trade routes or flow) will be replaced with another. It has already been announced about the substitution of the current shortage of some food products with some other imported goods. Thus, I can say, a change of suppliers will happen, but there will not be a sudden change in the total turnover.
The total amount of cargo flow may change a little but it depends on the general purchasing power in the economy. The flow will increase and decrease in different areas but in general the situation will be balanced.
Statistics data is showing the total volume of traffic at seaports does not change at all, in fact we have seen an increase. As this is the case then there isn’t any free capacity – no noticeable change in traffic.
Changes in the market conditions will be: Turkey has increased in cargo volume, the Stena Sealine route on the Black Sea (Ilyichevsk–Haydarpasa) works well, with growth of 20% in general, and in the south direction it is showing 60% growth, according to operational data.
Accumulated data from the beginning of the year shows an increase in traffic by 18%.
On the Baltic Sea sector accumulated data shows growth of 13.5% from the beginning of the year compared with the same period in 2013. There are several reasons for the growth- we added two additional roundtrips: one is on the route Ventspils (Latvia) – Nynäshamn (Sweden). There are 6 roundtrips per week now with a departure on a Sunday morning from Ventspils to Nynäshamn that is very convenient for picking up cargo at the weekend and the second additional roundtrip is to Travemünde in Germany from Latvia (from Liepaja port there are 5 calls per week now).
