Greg Knowler

Fears that methanol will not be available in the coming years at the scale required to power a growing and thirsty ocean fleet is pushing the orderbook deeper down the LNG pathway.

The facility's launch customer is known to be Amazon, which will use the strategically located warehouse to provide fulfilment services across the region.

Airlines repositioning freighter aircraft from the trans-Atlantic to the more profitable Asia market has combined with a seasonal decline in belly cargo on the Europe-US route to push rates on the trade lane near a two-year high.

While cargo volume is expected to grow 5.8% next year, the airline association is warning that aircraft supply chain issues will raise costs, possibly limiting that growth.

Customer advisories from Maersk, CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd show the carriers plan to “simplify the process” by merging compliance with the EU ETS and FuelEU regulations into one fuel surcharge.

Holes in the Atlantic port network are being plugged as ONE, the Ocean Alliance and HMM prepare for February's launch of the new container shipping groupings.

Handling large container exchanges with vessels arriving late and bunching outside import gateways is leading to bottlenecks at some of the region's largest hubs.

Shippers on the Europe-US trade lane are facing significant rate increases in January as the potential for disruption grows from labor uncertainty and new operating alliances.

Carriers have penciled in a return to the Red Sea and Suez Canal for the second half of the year, and some analysts are also using that as a baseline for their market outlooks, but the reality is that no one knows.

The market's normal tranquility is threatened by President-elect Donald Trump's promise to raise imports tariffs, as well as a potential second strike by the International Longshoremen's Association.