NON-ILA STEVEDORE GETS GREEN LIGHT IN NEWARK
Ocean carriers should refrain from making excessive cuts in freight rates in the transpacific trade while they add new vessel capacity this year, a senior executive of CMA CGM said.
“Carriers will have to behave themselves on pricing,” said Rodolphe Saade, senior vice president in charge of U.S. trades at the Marseilles-based carrier. He appealed for calm despite the changes in supply and balance trends in the market.
Saade said that CMA CGM, like most other major shipping lines, is introducing new vessels in the transpacific trade this year, but trade growth has slowed from 14 percent last year to an expected 4 to 6 percent this year. The French carrier is seeking an increase in its market share.
Following the recent negotiation of many service contracts for the May 1 renewal date, rates “are pretty much the same level as before of slightly lower,” Saade told American Shipper. For the new contractual season, carriers of the Transpacific Stabilization Agreement, including CMA CGM, had sought freight rate increases of $525 to $750 per 40-foot container.
In a separate development, CMA CGM launched yesterday (Wednesday) an Asia/U.S. West Coast service under a vessel-sharing agreement with China Shipping Container Lines. The “AAC” service, which is a continuation of an existing service previously operated solely with China Shipping tonnage, will now utilize two CMA CGM ships and three from China Shipping.
For CMA CGM, the vessel-sharing agreement operation with China Shipping replaces a slot-charter arrangement under CMA CGM bought slots from Maersk Sealand.
The AAC weekly loop has a revised port rotation of Qingdao, Shanghai, Ningbo, Kwangyang, Busan, Los Angeles, Oakland, Busan and Qingdao. Previous calls at Hakata by vessels on this service have been ended and average ship capacity increased from about 2,000 to 3,000 TEUs.
Norasia is also taking space on the AAC transpacific service.
The revised schedule and transit times data for the service are posted on the global liner shipping database ComPairData at http://www.compairdata.com.