THE CKYH alliance (Cosco, "K" Line, Yang Ming and Hanjin) will suspend seven services between Asia and the Mediterranean starting this month and into January.

CKYH said that it was cancelling the sailings to adjust to a reduced seasonal demand. It has not ruled out further capacity cuts to coincide with the Chinese Lunar New Year, which falls on the week beginning February 10.

CHONGQING'S Guoyuan port area, a river terminal situated in Liangjiang New Area, will see its second phase terminal completed by year end. This will bring an annual capacity of nearly two million tonne capacity to the port area.

Chongqing aims to build Guoyuan port area into a intermodal logistics hub where multiple means of transportation joins, including waterway, railway and highway, according to Xinhua's report.



By 2014, a rail line will be built at the port area to link to the Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe railway, enabling cargo from the lower reaches of Yangtze to be shipped to the port area and be carried via railway to Europe.



Chongqing also plans to expand the railway network inside the Liangjiang New Area to a level equivalent to European developed countries by 2015.

DCT GDANSK, the Baltic's rapidly growing gateway to Central-Eastern Europe and Russia celebrated its fifth anniversary last month with the facility increasing its capacity 25 per cent to 1.25 million TEU with the addition of new stacking areas.

The close cooperation between the container port and local authorities has ensured the development of surrounding road, rail and logistic infrastructure that were necessary to accompany the facility's rapid growth. To date, 500 jobs have been created in the port alone and many more will be generated by the 100-hectare logistics park project, now under construction, reports UK's Maritime Journal in Hampshire



DCT Gdansk was opened in October 2007 and has rapidly developed into Poland's biggest container terminal with over 57 per cent share in container handlings. The terminal serves Poland, surrounding Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) countries and Russia and is the only hub port on the Baltic Sea with weekly calls of ultra-large container vessels.

THE Central Government's State Council has issued new domestic waterway transport management regulations, which comes into force from January, reports Xinhua.

Within the regulations, there are provisions for foreign enterprises and individuals entering the river transport business, entitling them to hire Chinese ships and space.



The regulations are divided into general, water transport operators, water transport business activities, water transport auxiliary businesses, legal responsibilities and supplementary provisions.



The new rules intend to regulate domestic waterway transport management behaviour, maintain domestic waterway transport market order, insure domestic waterway transportation safety, and promote the healthy development of domestic waterway transport.



The state shall encourage and protect water transport market fair competition; monopoly and unfair competition shall be prohibited. The state will use economic, technical policies and measures to support and encourage water transport operators implement scale, intensive management and promote water transport industry structure adjustment; also it support and encourage water transport operator adopts advanced applicable waterway transportation equipment and technology, ensure transportation safety, promote energy saving, reducing emissions of pollutants. The state will protect the water transport operators, the passenger and the owner's legitimate rights and interests.



To protect water transport safety, maintain water transport market order of fair competition, the department in charge of transportation under the State Council may, according to the monitoring of water transportation market, decide to suspend licences for new capacity on specific passenger liner shipping and bulk liquid dangerous goods transport route and waters.



In addition, it has also defined the management measures about the passenger ships of below 12 persons and passenger ferry transport in towns and villages.

SOUTHEASTERN Fujian ran 1,842 sailings of direct container shipping services to Taiwan in the first nine months of the year, 3.48 per cent more than in the same period last year, carrying a total of 455,262 TEU, up 1.19 per cent, Xinhua reports.

In the same period, Fujian-Taiwan direct bulk shipping service ran 1,593 sailings, up 52 per cent, carrying a total of 9.9 million tonnes of bulk, up 41.49 per cent.

JAPAN's Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL) and Mitsui OSK Kinkai have completed a table top drill based on a scenario in which a steel product carrier collides with a small coaster off Daiozaki in Mie Prefecture, Japan.

The drill was staged in cooperation with the 4th Regional Coast Guard Headquarters, and was aimed at further strengthening the group's emergency response structure. Each of the MOL companies teamed up to organise emergency control headquarters.



The exercise was designed to confirm the necessary response procedures and smooth, precise communication critical in the event of a marine incident involving a Mitsui OSK Kinkai-operated vessel, a company statement said.



The drill scenario involved a steel product carrier on its way to Daiozaki in Mie Prefecture towards Kobe from Nagoya, colliding with a small coaster bound from Owase to Keihin. The drill presumed that the collision caused flooding in the engine room of the steel product carrier, leaving it disabled. The scenario also included fuel oil leaking from the damaged vessel, crew members being injured, and one of the coaster's crew members falling overboard.



The group holds biannual table top drills based on different scenarios, taking into account various conditions.

KOREA's intra-Asia specialist shipping line KMTC has celebrated 20 years in Hong Kong with a celebration dinner and cocktail reception at the Kowloon Shangri-La.

The event was well attended by over 200 people, including senior staff from both Hong Kong and Korea as well as with a large number of the carrier's customers.



KMTC president JS Park praised the efforts of the company's Hong Kong staff, which has grown significantly from a single service in 1992.



"After 20 years we are now proud to say that KMTC has become the leading carrier in the Intra-Asia region," Mr Park said.



This year also marks KMTC's 58th anniversary, a year in which the company expects to handle a total of 1.3 million TEU, up from 800,000 TEU just five years ago.



Mr Park said that such growth was attributable to the hard work of the company's staff and the continued support of KMTC's customers.



Speaking to the Hong Kong Shipping Gazette, a number of long-time KMTC customers explained why they continue to do business with the Korean carrier.



"Good service with competitive rates," said Onwin Container Line general manager Tommy Wong.



Eric Chan, whose company Fregate Logistics, has been shipping with KMTC for over 15 years, said that the Korean carrier has continued to provide good intra-Asia connectivity.



ESA Shipping's Mirriam Chan noted that KMTC's dedication to service excellence even in difficult times was a key to her continued support. "Service is their motto," she said.

LONDON's Commercial Court has ruled in favour of charterers against shipowners who claim that both parties should share in losses incurred when pirates seize ships, reports New York's Maritime Advocate.

The judge held that a clause inserted into a charter-owner contract should be construed in accordance with its "plain and obvious meaning" that piracy was an "off-hire event" and therefore on the owner's account but not the charterer's.



At issue was the exact wording of the clause, which said:



"Should the vessel put back whilst on voyage by reason of any accident or breakdown, or in the event of loss of time either in port or at sea or deviation upon the course of the voyage caused by sickness of or accident to the crew or any person onboard the vessel or by reason of the refusal of the master or crew to perform their duties, or oil pollution, even if alleged, or capture/seizure, or detention or threatened detention by any authority including arrest, the hire shall be suspended from the time of the inefficiency until the vessel is again efficient in the same or equidistant position in charterers' option, and voyage resumed there from. All extra directly related expenses incurred including bunker consumed during period of suspended hire shall be for owners' account."



The phrase, "capture/seizure, or detention or threatened detention by any authority" was the point of contention.



Owners said that any "capture/seizure" had to be by an "authority" before it was an "off-hire" event, whereas charterers successfully argued that capture/seizure was an "off-hire" event distinct from "detention or threatened detention by any authority", and that acts of piracy clearly fell within the meaning of "capture/seizure".



The finding was in contrast to the earlier and differently worded clause in the case of Cosco Bulk Carrier Co Ltd vs Team-Up Owning Co Ltd in the matter of the ship Saldanha in 2009 in which the court ruled the clause in that earlier case was similar, but sufficiently different, to warrant a ruling that the vessel was "on-hire" for the duration of its detention by pirates.



Said the Maritime Advocate: "The case serves to underline the importance of using clear words to allocate the risk in piratical events, to avoid the risk of subsequent disputes."

GLOBAL air cargo traffic growth continued to slow, gaining 0.6 per cent year on year together with world passenger volume, which slowed to a four per cent gain in September, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

Passenger traffic, while up, was lower than the 5.3 per cent year-on-year growth experienced in August and even lower compared to the six per cent average growth throughout the first half of the year.



Air cargo performance represented the second month-to-month growth decline, eroding the stability in volumes achieved earlier in 2012. Capacity in September was trimmed 0.6 per cent compared to the same period in 2011, strengthening the freight load factor to 45.6 per cent from 45.1 per cent a year ago.



European airlines experienced 5.4 per cent growth on international services when compared to September 2011, the strongest performance among the major regions despite a recession in Europe. The Asia-Pacific was one of the weakest regions as demand increased 1.7 per cent year on year.



International traffic for North American airlines climbed 2.1 per cent in September while capacity declined 0.2 per cent, with the load factor reaching 84.6 per cent, the highest for any region and a two per cent rise over September 2011. Traffic for African airlines climbed 4.7 per cent year on year on a three per cent rise in capacity.



Carriers in the Middle East and Latin America posted by far the strongest traffic growth in September. Demand was up 13.3 per cent year on year in the Middle East while Latin American airlines posted a growth of 7.5 per cent year on year. Compared to August, traffic rose 2.7 per cent in Latin America, the strongest month-to-month performance for any region.



"A two-speed recovery is emerging into a multi-speed reality," said IATA CEO Tony Tyler, former CEO of Hong Kong Cathay Pacific Airways. "Carriers in China, Latin America and the Middle East are growing strongly. Europe's airlines are experiencing profitless growth in a strategy to manage high fixed costs and taxes. In Africa the challenge is to turn growth into profit. But for North American airlines the focus is on tightly managing capacity in order to optimise profits in a slow- to no-growth environment."

THE world's largest air cargo handling organisation, responsible for more than four million tonnes of cargo a year for 300 airline and airport customers at 120 stations globally, Worldwide Flight Services (WFS), has won the contract to provide freight handling for British Airways World Cargo (BAWC) at London's Gatwick Airport.

Starting next month around half of the existing BAWC team will transfer to WFS at the site whilst the remaining staff are to be offered positions by the airline at London Heathrow, according to UK's Handy Shipping Guide.



To support the airline's requirements, WFS has acquired a second warehouse facility at Gatwick that will be dedicated to the British Airways World Cargo operation. Ahead of the December start date, WFS will refurbish and upgrade the 30,000 square foot freight centre, including office modernisation, a new container handling system, a 20-foot container lift and fast lanes linking the air and landside areas.



In the last three years, WFS has substantially increased its presence at London's Heathrow and Gatwick, increasing its warehouse capacity to more than 300,000 square feet after opening its first cargo centre at Gatwick in September 2011, a 25,000 square foot unit which can now handle up to 50,000 tonnes per annum for clients such as Vietnam Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Monarch Airlines and Leisure Cargo, which represents over 20 airlines in the UK and Ireland, including Thomson.



In 2008, WFS purchased a 60 per cent of British Airways Regional Cargo from its three founders. British Airways World Cargo holds the remaining 40 per cent of shares. As part of this agreement, WFS took over cargo handling for the airline in Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow as well as at other regional airports in the UK and Ireland.



Said WFS vice president Patrick Roberts: "Our plan is to grow our presence at Gatwick - a key part of our strategic development plan - and this is a long-term commitment. This latest success for us in the UK and Ireland consolidates our leading position in the market at London's major gateway airports and in the regions."

ATLAS Air Worldwide Holdings (AAWH), parent of Atlas Air and Polar Air Cargo, has posted a year-on-year 20.2 per cent third quarter profit increase to US$33.9 million, drawn on revenues of $409.3 million, up 13 per cent.

President and CEO William Flynn said the company achieved strong results even as the overall air cargo market has "underperformed expectations this year," reports Washington DC-area Air Transport World.



Mr Flynn explained that AAWH expects "strong, double-digit earnings growth" for the full year, though not as robust as previously anticipated "given the relative underperformance of the air freight market to date this year and the softer-than-expected peak season that is materialising."



AAWH earned $62.3 million in operating income in the third quarter, up 43.2 per cent year on year. Block hours flown in its core ACMI business rose 7.7 per cent to 28,451 and revenue per ACMI block hour increased one per cent to $6,247.