"The setup of a transnational logistics network in the south-eastern Baltic Sea region is the most important goal"
The potential of the Amber Coast region and its natural hinterland for the transport and logistics sector in Europe must not be wasted. This and other postulations were expressed by representatives of the transnational project called "Amber Coast Logistics" at the Baltic Sea Days in Berlin. Guests included international ambassadors, members of the Bundestag and representatives of companies and associations, besides German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.
"The southern and eastern Baltic Sea region as well as Northwest Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine are among the most promising logistics regions of Europe. However, development of the transport and logistics infrastructure in these countries has been inadequate at best," said Axel Mattern, CEO of Port of Hamburg Marketing, the marketing organization for the Port of Hamburg, as he explained the background of the "Amber Coast Logistics" project (ACL) during the foreign trade conference "Baltic Sea Forum on the Baltic Sea Region” in the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin. "There are regions with low accessibility for the transportation of goods. We want to change this with ACL." Port of Hamburg Marketing is the lead partner of the EU-funded project, which has existed for around half a year. 19 other partners from Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, Denmark and Germany are involved, including representatives of ports, logistics locations, public authorities and research institutes.
The Baltic Sea Forum took place as part of the Baltic Sea Days to which invitations were extended by the Federal Foreign Office on the occasion of the 2011/2012 German Presidency of the Council of the Baltic Sea States. The conference was mainly directed at companies and institutions of industry and trade from member states of the Council of the Baltic Sea States. German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle opened the event. He reminded everyone that cooperation between neighbouring Baltic Sea countries is not self-evident. There must be consistent and continuous work on the establishment of this important economic community.
ACL workshop at the foreign trade conference
During its presidency of the Council of the Baltic Sea States, Germany put modernisation of the south-eastern Baltic Sea region on its agenda, especially elimination of the economic and infrastructure difference between the north-western and south-eastern Baltic Sea region. Through the project "Amber Coast Logistics" this task will be conferred on the transport and logistics industry. Backgrounds and the objectives of ACL were discussed at the foreign trade conference with around 50 international guests in the context of a workshop. The event was moderated by Kurt Bodewig, Federal Minister (ret.) and Chairman of the Board of the Baltic Sea Forum: "The Baltic Sea Forum on the Baltic Sea Region with around 550 participants provided a unique opportunity for the project to establish additional contacts to representatives of neighbouring Baltic Sea countries. The establishment of a transnational logistics network in the south-eastern Baltic Sea region is one of the most important goals of ACL. This is because only with strong partnerships can we also achieve the necessary organisational improvements for optimisation of the transport connections." The Baltic Sea Forum, a non-governmental association for promotion of the Baltic Sea region, is one of the 20 partners in the project. Besides Axel Mattern, speakers included Dr. Eugenijus Gentvilas, CEO of the Klaipeda State Sea Port Authority, as well as Mathias Roos, Project Manager of the EU project "East West Transport Corridor II" and Project and Communication Manager at Region Blekinge.
Parliamentarians informed about ACL
ACL project partners also presented their goals and results thus far to around 20 parliamentarians in Berlin during the course of the 11th port breakfast in the Hamburg embassy. Marina Rimpo, Project Manager of "Amber Coast Logistics" with Port of Hamburg Marketing, pointed out a few examples of some problems that confront logistics players in the southern and eastern Baltic Sea region. They included the different gauges of the railway network between the former Soviet Union and Western Europe as well as different VAT rates for imports from third countries into the common customs union of White Russia, Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation. During the course of the project, challenges like these are analysed and recommendations for improvement are compiled in policy papers that are submitted to politicians at national and EU levels. "The port breakfast brought together members of the Bundestag from all fractions and informed them about the EU project. We are delighted that the parliamentarians have already signalled their support," says Kurt Bodewig.
Port of Hamburg Marketing e.V.
GUANGDONG provincial ports, which include all ports but Hong Kong in the Pearl River Delta, posted a first quarter 3.4 per cent increase in container volume to 10.37 million TEU, Xinhua reports.
Municipally, Guangzhou lifted 3.25 million TEU, up 12.1 per cent; Shenzhen was up 0.4 per cent to 5.1 million TEU; Zhanjiang increased 21.2 per cent to 94,100 TEU and Shantou handled 270,400 TEU, up 12.3 per cent.
Overall provincial cargo throughput came to 302.23 million tonnes, up 5.2 per cent year on year. Guangdong's foreign trade cargo throughput increased 9.4 per cent to 108 million tonnes. Domestic trade cargo grew 3.2 per cent to 194.23 million tonnes.
Guangzhou handled 98.51 million tonnes, up 5.2 per cent. Shenzhen's increased 6.4 per cent to 53.48 million tonnes. Southern Guandong's Zhanjiang port lifted 42.79 million tonnes, up 11.9 per cent. Eastern Guangdong's Shandong port lifted 10.51 million tonnes, 11.5 per cent more than in the same period a year ago.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
NEW YORK-based American Feeder Lines (AFL) has suspended its nine-month feeder service running between Boston, Halifax, and Portland, Maine and the carrier is now undertaking a restructuring process.
"Even one year into the service, we failed to generate sufficient cargo from the carriers and did not get the support of the trade," said CEO Tobias Koenig, reported American Shipper.
"The service has been suspended and we have been in talks with investors to continue. But unfortunately, these talks have died and AFL has therefore taken the decision to cease trading," said Mr Keonig, who started the service last July with a 700-TEU chartered vessel AFL New England.
"There is an iron curtain around the Jones Act industry and all participants are too scared of the outside world," he said.
"We have figured out how much money you need to spent to start a Jones Act pilot service, which we have tried to get approved, but I think that you can simply double or even triple the costs, after we have made our experience in the northeast. And I don't think that I will be there to spend that kind of money. My missionary efforts have come to an end," Mr Keonig said.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
THIRTEEN of the world's 19 biggest shipping banks have stopped lending to the industry because too many ships are chasing too little cargo value, cutting cash flows and leading to vessel seizures, reports Bloomberg.
Investors who had been promised annual returns of 15 per cent have instead lost EUR37.5 million (US$49 million) when Germany's Container Flotten-Fonds went bellyup last year.
German tax exemptions for shipping funds, designed to provide cheaper financing than banks, are becoming meaningless, said Christian Nieswandt, head of domestic shipping clients at HSH Nordbank.
"The shipping fund market is more or less dead for years to come," he told Bloomberg. "There will be further insolvencies."
Like the US housing crisis, ships were bought at the price peak in 2007. After values slumped, the size of the loan in relation to the value of the ship used as collateral for the funding from banks rose.
The contract price for a 8,500-TEU ship dropped 31 per cent to EUR92.5 million in 2011, from a peak of EUR134 million in 2007, according to Morgan Stanley. Values will decline to EUR89.5 million this year, said the bank.
With even big players like AP Moeller-Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd showing losses last year as fuel costs rise, overcapacity persists and a price war threatening on the Asia-Europe route, many carriers cannot pay their debts, according to the VDR German shipowners' association.
Shipping funds financed purchases with borrowed money from banks, leaving them vulnerable when lenders raised interest rates, said Christian Luber, a Munich lawyer representing investors in failed German shipping funds.
"It is like when you buy a house: the less equity you put in, the more interest you pay," said Mr Luber, adding that banks financed 70 per cent of newbuildings with investors providing the rest.
Christian Murach, transport finance head at KfW IPEX-Bank, said some German shipping funds have been unable to service their debt "for years" and their ships may have to be sold. This prompted banks to write down the value of their portfolios, thus increasing expectations of further bank loan losses.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
The Port of Los Angeles will spend more than US$3 billion on terminals, on-dock rail and intermodal links in a fight to retain its No 1 ranking as America's biggest container port against threats from Canada and the Panama Canal.
"Protecting and retaining discretionary cargo market share in the face of changing economic conditions and intensifying competition is the key to the future of the port and the region," said the recently released Port of Los Angeles 2012-2017 Strategic Plan.
With containers accounting for 80 per cent of its revenue, and Canadian ports diverting more cargo to themselves and US east coast ports siphoning off boxes via Panama, Los Angeles is in a fight to keep its 21 per cent share of US box volume.
Fifty per cent of the container shipments to LA are discretionary, according to the plan, making the future threat of an expanded Panama Canal in 2015 a clear and present danger as the waterway doubles capacity from an old 4,500-TEU ship limit to accommodate 12,000-TEUers.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
CHINA's island province of Hainan province has posted a 11.3 per cent year on year first quarter freight volume increase to 19.05 million tonnes, Xinhua reports.
In the same period, the province recorded passenger number of 39.19 million people, up 12.9 per cent year on year.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
CHONGQING has posted a 14.1 per cent increase in first quarter container throughput year on year to 97,000 TEU, Xinhua reports.
The city's international shipment tonnage totalled to 1.92 million tonnes, up 16.5 per cent.
International air freight surged 160 per cent to 25,100 tonnes. Waterway foreign trade containers jumped 59.7 per cent to 72,000 TEU, tonnage increased 15.5 per cent to 1.88 million tonnes.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
BALTIC Container Terminal (BCT) in Gdynia Port in Poland handled 41,108 TEU in March, an increase of 38.9 per cent over the same month last year, the Baltic Transport Journal reported.
The throughput was the highest since October 2008 and also the highest after the first wave of the financial crisis. BCT is one of the biggest terminals in the Baltic region and the leading container facility in Poland.
During the first quarter of this year, BCT Gdynia handled 103,962 TEU, a surge of 23 per cent year on year.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
GLOBAL logistics provider, Agility, has won a contract to move 420 railcars from Spain to Kazakhstan for TALGO, a Madrid-based Spanish manufacturer of railway rolling stock.
The company's teams across Europe - from Spain, Finland and Kazakhstan - will handle this complex, heavy-lift project. The company had earlier succeeded in delivering the initial shipment of railcars against extremely challenging deadlines.
Under the contract, Agility will provide all logistics services starting with the collection of the railcars at factories in Spain through delivery to Talgo's works in Astana, Kazakhstan.
Alejandro Goicoechea and Jose Luis Oriol founded TALGO (Tren Articulado Ligero Goicoechea Oriol, or Goicoechea-Oriol light articulated trains) in 1942.
Agility intends to apply its specialised expertise, global network and partnerships to manage the movement of the rolling stock from origin to final destination.
"Agility has a strong presence in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan," said Francesc Casamitjana, managing director of area south. "We understand fast moving economies and bring experience and know-how to industries such as engineering, energy, mining and heavy equipment supply."
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
ROTTERDAM's Mundo International Logistics UK division has been appointed as Russia's Fesco Transportation Group's northwest Europe's agent to provide container services across Russia and the neighbouring Commonwealth of Independent States of the former Soviet Union.
"We are delighted to have been appointed as a Fesco northwest Europe agent as it means we can offer access to one of Russia's most comprehensive transport providers," said Mundo International Logistics UK director Malcolm Stafford.
Fesco offers a weekly service from all main UK ports to St Petersburg, Vladivostok, Vostochny, Kholmsk, Korsakov, Magadan, Pertropavlovsk Kamch.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
HONG KONG's air freight solutions provider ASR Holdings will more than double its mainland presence in logistic centres and sales offices from its current 14 to as many as 33 by 2014.
Air cargo space is sold wholesale market for airlines in bulk to mid-sized couriers on outbound air routes originating from the Pearl River Delta, predominantly Hong Kong to worldwide destinations.
Its aim is to focus on emerging markets such as Eastern Europe rather than more competitive areas of the world, said its chairman Sunny Yu Ho-yuen, of a company founded by Hong Kong-based airline veterans at the start of 2012.
ASR Holdings increased revenue by 23 per cent to HK$603 million (US$77.7 million) despite a global air cargo decline of 8.3 per cent.
The Hong Kong Standard also reported that executive director Niki Law Kai-lo said that "by doing business for less-crowded airlines, we can sometimes become the sole distributor of cargo space for air flights, so we can command much better margins."
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
AIR cargo flights between Afghanistan and Riga are launched to support the US armed forces for the delivery of non-military goods, primarily food products.
The daily flights are in addition to overland transport from Latvia by rail through Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan which was opened up due to the deterioration of security in Pakistan.
The air cargo service will increase shortly between two to three flights a day of which 100 tons of freight will be carried on each plane.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
ONE of the largest air freight carriers, the AN-124-100 Ruslan freighter aircraft, operated by the Volga-Dnepr Group/Ruslan International recently touched down at Grand Bahamas International Airport in a display of the island's potential as a logistic hub for air transportation, the Bahamas Tribune reported.
Grand Bahamas Shipyard officials contracted the company to transport two massive ship propellers to Europe. The aircraft is equipped with four jumbo jet engines and has a cargo capacity of 120 tonnes. The ship propellers each weigh 30 tonnes.
The operation was co-ordinated through the joint efforts of the Grand Bahamas Shipyard, Freeport Ship Services, Quality Services Ltd and the Grand Bahamas Airport Company.
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
INDIA's budget airline SpiceJet has been approached by Gulf and Asian carriers for a stake buy-out, but Dubai's Emirates flatly denies its interest.
At a Barcelona-based Aircraft Finance & Commercial Aviation (AFCA) conference, Emirates president Tim Clark dismissed reports of its interest in the Indian aviation sector, and in particular the budget carrier, said Reuters.
In separate news from the Oman Tribune, the Indian government has approved 22 foreign direct investment (FDI) proposals worth US$112.5 million rather than foreign institutional investor (FII) funds its considers risky or "hot money".
Shipping Gazette - Daily Shipping News
Kazakhstan's tourism industry expects fast movement in the region by announcing the development of one of the world’s longest ski reports in a country that currently ranks at 93 out of 139 in the World Tourism Ranking for 2011, Kazworld.info reported.
Kazakhstan tourism announced new strategic plans targeting every coming year, with each year aiming for further success. The government is trying to convert Kazakhstan into the "Land of Tourism Resorts."
The government has approved plan for the creation of an international resort with total ski runs running 100 km in length, along with the construction of passenger cableways, hotels, restaurants, shopping malls, and golf courses; and the establishment of infrastructure - roads, parking, electricity, gas, and water supply at Kok-Zhaylyao that is located on the territory of Ile-Alatau Park. This ski resort will be a new addition in the neighborhood of Almaty in the radius of 50 km, where there are ten existing ski resorts: Shimbulak, Ak-bulak, Tabagan, Almatau, Yelik-Say, Shybynsay, Enbek, Tau-Turan, Forest tail, Dinamo, a resort in Kaskelen gorge, and other lesser-known resorts.
The Agency of Tourism and Sports has already sent a request for allocation of funds from the national budget, and this project is called "strategic" and considered to pull the tourism economy of the country.
Meanwhile, the Tourism Development Plan of Kazakhstan will be finalized before the end of 2012. According to official sources, including the office of Minister of Industry and Innovative Technologies, it is hoped that by the end of the year, a tourism development program that carries through until 2020, would be approved. According to this plan, tourism will be seen as a strong and promising industry that will give a strong impetus to the economy.
Statistics show a steady growth of tourism industry of the country. The volume of services rendered by the tourism industry last year stood at 74 billion tenge.
Central Asian News Service, en.ca-news.org
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