In container shipping, every year since the pandemic has seen at least one globally felt disruption to major container shipping trade lanes and routes.
At the close of 2023, shipping in the Red Sea’s Bab el-Mandeb Strait was taken over by a violent and indiscriminate threat to shipping, as Houthi attacks became a near-constant presence for all vessels trading through the Red Sea. The attacks caused lines to halt services and redirect vessels, and the rerouteing in 2024 led to another run of high profits for many container lines.
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1. Indian Coast Guard continues to fight deadly fire on ’newly built’ Maersk box ship
An AP Moller-Maersk box ship that entered service in May 2024 caught fire off the coast of India after an explosion that claimed a seafarer’s life. “The newly built container ship Maersk Frankfurt suffered an explosion that caused a fire while navigating the Arabian Sea,” The Panama Maritime Authority, the governing entity of the Panama Ship Registry, where the vessel is flagged, said in a statement on 22 July.
2. US, China clash over neutrality of drought-hit Panama Canal
As the Panama Canal recovers from a drought that, as recently as October, threatened to halve the usual number of available slots and has pushed rates sky-high, the vital waterway has also become a geopolitical flashpoint. Behind the scenes, China and the US are involved in a diplomatic and commercial tussle over the neutrality of the canal that the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Professor Daniel Runde, an authority on the issue, sees as increasingly tense.
3. ’Developing mass casualty event’ as ship strike collapses bridge in US
“Coast Guard watchstanders received a report into the Coast Guard Sector Maryland – National Capital Region command centre at 01:27 am reporting a 289-m Singapore-flagged container ship collided with the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Additionally, it was reported that the bridge collapsed and there were reports of persons in the water,” the USCG said.
4. Video: container ship explosion in Chinese port points to dangerous cargo
An explosion in a shipping container on board Yang Ming-operated YM Mobility has been captured on video in China’s second-largest through port for containerised shipping.
The explosion on board the 6,500-TEU box ship was captured by what appears to be closed circuit television at the port as well as by eyewitnesses far from the scene in a video that was uploaded to YouTube.
5. Russia and China look to use Northern Sea Route year-round
Russia’s state nuclear agency Rosatom has partnered with China’s Hainan Yangpu Newnew Shipping Co Ltd to establish a year-round container shipping line along the Arctic’s Northern Sea Route. The plans announced will transport about 3M tonnes of transit cargo along the Northern Sea Route by the end of the year.
The agreement aims to create a new infrastructure corridor to build and operate container ships, and was signed at the annual St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF-2024) on 6 June.
This article was originally posted by Riviera News