panamax

Texas ports like Freeport have embarked on major expansion projects to handle larger ships.

1997: “Comparing our project to the Panama Canal is to confuse an apple with an orange,” New York lawyer Don M. Bosco said. “Our competition won’t be the canal. Instead, we intend to take significant business from the 3,000-mile U.S. landbridge system.”

Ben Thrower recently visited the Panama Canal. He writes about the canal’s expansion and what that means to global trade and the maritime industry.

New incentives for container shipping could bring more boxes through the canal to the U.S. East Coast.

U.S. coal export volumes are down 12.7 percent in the first four months of this year and the outlook looks even worse for 2020.

The final part of the FreightWaves series on the Panama Canal focuses on dry bulk transits. The two trends: US agribulk cargo to Asia is down, Colombian coal to the west coast of South America and Asia is up.

In the second-part of its series on the Panama Canal, FreightWaves interviews a canal authority executive on trends for container-ship transits and expectations for ship size growth in the years ahead.

Indonesian coal suppliers have increased their domestic coal production target by 4.5 percent from a previous 485 million tonnes to a massive 507 million tonnes in the current year. All the additional tonnage will be exported.

China imposed a 25% import duty on US soybean imports in July and a domestic shortage of beans is now resulting in Chinese traders paying a higher price for Brazilian beans than what domestic crushers are paying, leading to speculation that China could again increase shipments from the US.

A surge in hydro-power, cleaner air in the Capital and a need to further stimulate the economy will see increased demand for seaborne coal supplies to China this winter. That is good news for freight.