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Balaji Shipping Lines to start Oman service from India

Balaji Shipping Lines FZCO to launch New AGS Service to Umm Qasr, Iraq from Jan 26th 2012

We are extremely pleased to announce the launch of BSL's upgraded AGS service to Umm Qasr-Iraq.

Iraq's political scenario continues to be challenging, but trade and commerce is expected to boom from 2012 onwards. There was a strong need expressed by the trade to have a "trusted and reliable" carrier who is willing to partner in the transport chain and provide two-way transparent information in difficult markets. Its not a surprise, that BSL was the first name that came to mind. We at the Transworld Group & BSL have always been convinced about the important role of Jebel Ali in the Middle East Logistics scenario. Our network of in-house and strong local offices/partners ensures that customers always receive top-class service in the toughest of markets.

The launch of this new and upgraded AGS service from Jebel Ali to Umm Qasr shall provide a reliable and dedicated highway for our customers. The service also includes calls from Mundra and Dammam thus providing customers with multiple export/import points.

Jebel Ali Gateway:

DP World - Jebel Ali is ideally positioned to be the critical hub for traffic into Umm Qasr - Iraq. With continuously upgraded facilities and state-of-the-art infrastructure, Jebel - Ali is geographically perfect for smooth flow of both transhipment and logistics / 3 PL operations. With a growing economy and GDP projected to be above 9% in 2012, Iraq is expected to source their requirements from the neighbouring countries in the Indian Sub-Cont, Colombo, Karachi and Saudi Arabia. In addition, a large share of the Far-east traffic is expected to seek routing via Jebel Ali.

Mundra Gateway:

The Port of Mundra is located in the Kutch district of the state of Gujarat and lies on the north shores of the Gulf of Kutch. It is one of the closest ports to the huge hinterland of northern and central India which comprises Rajasthan, Haryana, Delhi, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, accounting for about 2/3 of India's cargo. The port has excellent in-land connectivity thru rail track, road network, airport and cross country pipelines. The AGS service would be the first direct call between Mundra, Dammam & Iraq enabling the Indian exporters to have a regular highway for their products overseas.

Dammam Gateway:

King Abdul Aziz Port, Dammam, is the principal port of Saudi Arabia in the Gulf and is located approximately mid-way along the Eastern Coast. King Abdul Aziz Port is the main gateway through which cargoes from all over the world enter the Eastern and Central Provinces of the Kingdom. It is strategically placed to service the requirements of the oil industry, the continuous development of Riyadh, the capital, and the major provincial cities in the Eastern and Central Provinces. The AGS service would be the first direct call between Dammam port and Iraq enabling the Saudi Arabian exporters to have a regular highway for promoting their products into Iraq.

Apart from the carriage of dry cargo, BSL now provides customers with a dedicated reefer cargo highway as well.
This dedicated reefer high-way is another first from BSL !!

BSL will constantly serve the ever-growing needs of our customers and promises to continue with upgrades in line with the trade requirements. We look forward to your support and patronage, without which our presence in this region for over 25 years would not have been possible.


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Non Declararation of Dangerous Goods

Balaji Shipping Lines FZCO launches regular AGS Liner Shipping Services

Balaji Shipping Lines has bagged best NVOCC of the Year 2011 - MALA

Maritime and Logistics Awards 2010 won for best NVOCC.

Balaji Shipping Lines at Commonwealth Games 2010

Global Trade to rise by 13.5%

Charter rates out of kilter as boxship prices rise

25.07.2010

Containership prices continue to strengthen as buyers scour the market for available secondhand tonnage, pushing values out of line with charter rates.

Current price levels "are not supported by earnings", one broker commented.

Nevertheless, there is plenty of interest, with one owner turning down offers in the region of $28m apiece for two 1,700 TEU ships bought last year for around $17m each.

Another owner, Briese Schiffahrt, was forced to deny market talk that it had sold a pair of 1,700 TEU newbuildings, Driever and Neermoor, to a Greek buyer.

The ships recently came out of lay-up after six months out of action, and are now trading although earnings remain unsatisfactory. However, they have not been sold, the German company said, despite a number of approaches from interested buyers and rumours of offers of around $25m per vessel.

All boxship prices have rallied sharply in recent months after collapsing last year.

Values in 2009 for 1,700 TEU ships were marked down to an average around $14m for five-year-old units, according to London broker Clarksons, half the level at which they were changing hands in 2007. But prices have rebounded this year, with that particular size gaining 26% over the past quarter.

Nevertheless, the container trades remain burdened by a large amount of capacity in the pipeline, with Alphaliner calculating that this month will see over 200,000 TEU of new deliveries, the highest monthly level recorded to date.

The July figure follows 747,000 TEU of deliveries in the first half of the year.

Deliveries in the seven months are the equivalent of 7.3% of fleet capacity, with another 500,000 TEU due in the remaining five months of 2010.

The idle fleet is also shrinking fast, with inactive capacity now put at just 2% of the boxship fleet. That represents a 19-month low of 274,000 TEU.

Alphaliner reckons that only 150 ships are now idle, against 174 two weeks earlier and nearly 600 late last year.

Furthermore, no ships in excess of 5,000 TEU are still out of service, while only 22 in the 3,000 TEU-5,000 TEU size bracket currently in some form of lay-up.

Most of the big owners and operators have reactivated idle ships to help handle peak season cargoes, but some tonnage providers are seeking a premium to ensure the charter terms cover the cost of returning idle tonnage back into service as well as an operating profit.

One owner that has reduced its idle fleet from around 20 ships at the height of the market slump, to just eight of 3,000 TEU or smaller, has fixed charters of at least 18 months at levels that make it worthwhile to go to the expense bringing ships out of lay-up.

In the charter market, Chilean line CSAV has been exceptionally active, with at least seven recent fixtures reported, including a couple of extensions.

Ships taken by CSAV include the 4,250 TEU CSCL Felixstowe, chartered for between 25 and 28 months at $23,200 a day, plus a pair of 3,416 TEU ships, Box Trader and Box Voyager, for two years at a daily rate of $20,000. These were bought recently by Paragon Shipping, which said its container fleet’s fixed revenue days were now 100% for 2010 and 92% for 2011.

Opinion is split about prospects for the container trades, with some players confident that the market can sustain the recent recovery through the fourth quarter, and others equally sure charter rates will soften once the peak period is over.

The pessimists are keeping a close eye on deliveries, with at least eight ships of 10,000 TEU or more being delivered this month, and another 12 due to be handed over in August and September. Four operators are lined up to receive these titans CMA CGM, Maersk, Mediterranean Shipping Co and Zim that has relet one of its newbuildings to Evergreen.

With scrapping also slowing, Alphaliner calculates that fleet capacity will expand by 9.6% in 2010.

Although the huge influx of new capacity has not had a noticeable impact yet on freight rates, Alphaliner notes that the Shanghai Containerised Freight Index starting to show signs of weakening.

"The high level of capacity increases could threaten the recovery in freight levels, especially if demand in August is not as strong as carriers expect," the firm warns.

For now, though, freight rates are holding steady, with Drewry’s weekly Hong Kong-Los Angeles container rate benchmark staying unchanged for the third consecutive week at $2,624 per 40 ft loaded box. That represents an increase of more than 200% on rates prevailing a year ago.

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Congestion surcharges at Nhava Sheva

Charter rates play catch up with freight rates as supply and demand balance shifts in owners' favour

20.06.2010

Containership charter rates have almost doubled for some sizes since the start of the year as lines scramble to find enough capacity to handle much stronger cargo demand.

The rebound has gathered pace in recent weeks, and looks set to continue over the forthcoming peak season.

The charter market is now catching up with the freight trades that began to pick up from the 2009 collapse in trade towards the end of last year.

Charter rates were slow to join in the recovery at first. But as lines reactivated laid-up tonnage and brought back services that had been withdrawn last year, so the supply and demand balance has shifted in favour of owners.

Latest Lloyd's List Intelligence data shows that 347 boxships of just over 543,000 TEU are inactive. That compares with more than 660 vessels of 1.3m TEU at the end of last year. Many of those still out of work tend to be older, more fuel-hungry ships that would be relatively hard to charter out, and may be ultimately destined for demolition.

The latest ConTex index published by the Hamburg Shipbrokers' Association puts current average time charter rates for a 2,500 TEU vessel at $10,960 per day, having started the year at around $4,900.

Rates for 1,700 TEU ships have climbed from $4,100 to more than $7,000 over the same period, but fixtures concluded this week suggest the upwards trend is still strong. A German owner has just chartered a 1995-built 1,724 TEU vessel to an Asian line for 10 months at a reported $7,950 per day.

Another vessel, the 2,732 TEU Antje Wulff, has been fixed for a year at $10,000 per day, according to brokers. This represents a 30% rise in the last few weeks and is nearly double what similar ships were getting in April.

"We have had a fantastic run of business. We are smiling again," said one broker today. Nevertheless, charter rates remain weak compared with the highs of 2005 and 2007.

Concern that the rally seen in the container trades over the past six months had been driven purely by re-stocking, and so would be short-lived, is now fading.

There is a growing confidence that healthy growth in Asia, South America and certain other parts of the world will offset a sluggish upturn in northern Europe and the US.

That conviction is underlined by the latest forecast from Alphaliner, which expects the global container trades to expand by 11.5 % in 2010, albeit with a slowdown in the latter part of the year after a very strong first half.

New data also shows that Chinese container ports recorded their highest-ever monthly throughput in May, with 12.4m TEU handled during the month.

That was almost 22% higher than in May 2009 and 16.6% up on the corresponding month of 2008.

The strong performance came on the back of a 48% increase in the value of Chinese exports and imports for May, according to Alphaliner, a figure that exceeded analysts' forecasts by a significant margin.

With market fundamentals radically different from conditions of a few months ago when charter rates were still bumping along the bottom, owners are now taking a very short-term perspective and in many cases only prepared to charter out tonnage for a few weeks as they anticipate further rate increases over the course of the northern hemisphere summer.

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Rail failure prompts boxes to avoid JN Port for Pipavav, Mundra

20.06.2010

Container shipping continues to divert from Jawaharlal Nehru Port (JN) near Mumbai to the northern ports of Pipavav and Mundra in Gujarat state because railways cannot remove them fast enough from the docks.

JN port operations chief SN Maharana blamed the Container Corp of India Ltd (Concor), which runs container trains between ports and inland container depots for not having enough rolling stock to move the containers out, reports Live Mint Wall Street Journal.

JN port has three container loading terminals, one run by DP World, another by the government-owned port itself, and a third operated by a consortium comprising APM Terminals and Concor.

Container congestion at JN port was blamed on trains backlogged all along the route to the inland national capital of New Delhi. Counting storage and rail freight fees, the cost of moving goods from Mumbai to Delhi was up to US$840 per container - three times as much as getting the containers to India from Singapore, reported the New York Times.

"They don't have space," said SKS Logistics chairman SK Saha, who explained that the government-owned Indian Railways is fully booked.

Economists say India must invest heavily in transportation to achieve its stated annual GDP growth goal of 10 per cent. But highway, airway and railway development falls far short of what's needed, said the Times.

Critics say the growth has been hampered by government leaders who face touchy constituents and influential special interests in a clamorous democracy contrasted to China's undemocratic free hand to order a forced march towards economic development, said the Times.

Even though Indian law allows the railways to acquire land quickly through hearings before magistrates, the railways minister has promised landowners to negotiate individually. While popular, it stands to add years to every transport project.

Another problem is that migrant workers can travel from Mumbai to their homes in Bihar 1,050 miles away for INR500 (US$11). To subsidise this, freight is stung with the highest tariffs in the world, said the New York Times. India charges four times what American companies charge for rail freight and twice as much as in China.

Four years ago, the government began allowing private companies to operate container trains. One of the new carriers is IndiaLinx, which buys rail cars and leases tracks, locomotives and workers from the Indian Railways.

IndiaLinx CEO Amitabha Chaudhuri said his company would carry about 95,000 containers this year, up from 55,000 last year. The company, which is owned by Singapore's APL Logistics, has seen strong demand for refrigerated containers, which are in short supply in India.

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Railway network thrown open to private operators

07.06.2010

The move, which came into effect on June 1, is aimed at complementing the Railways' efforts to increase its share in freight movement through the public-private partnership (PPP) route.

At present, the road sector accounts for 65 per cent of the freight traffic, while the Railways' share is just 30 per cent.

The new policy permits private operators to transport goods for end-users on payment of a fee.

On developing freight terminals, the revenue model involves fee-sharing between the Railways and the private operator.

To operate freight trains, the private firm will be offered a wagon-specific rebate so as to make the business remunerative.

The concession period is 20 years, extendable by 10 years.

A freight train operator can carry fertilizers, cement, chemicals, edible oil and petrochemicals, excluding cooking gas, auto fuel and kerosene.

To load each rake-which should not be smaller than what the Railways use-a freight rebate of 12 per cent will be granted to the operator for 20 years or until the investment is recovered.

In the case of high-capacity wagons, a higher rebate of 2 per cent will be given for each additional tonnage of 10 per cent.

Revenue-sharing on freight terminals will start after five years of the commissioning of the terminal (two years in case of brownfield project).

The firm will have to give the higher of 50 per cent of prevailing freight rate, or Rs 10 per tonne, to Railways.

"The main aim of the policy is to increase the presence of the Railways in the overall transport chain and divert traffic from road to rail".

"The policies are also expected to benefit the Railways in matching the investment target as noted in the Vision Document," a senior Ministry official explained".

A freight train operator should have a minimum net worth of Rs 50 crore or annual turnover of at least Rs 75 crore in the previous financial year.

The norms outlined in the policy also make it binding on the operator not to transfer the ownership of the company before one year of starting commercial operations.

For terminal operators, the Railways will give its sanction only if the applicant is providing logistics service for at least one year or is an existing container train operator.

Also, the project should be commissioned within three years of getting the approval.

In its Vision 2010 document, the Ministry forecast increasing the freight volume from 833 million tonnes in 2008-09 to 1,010 million tonnes by 2011-12 and 2,165 million tonnes in 2020 through PPP in operation of freight trains and freight terminals.

The Railway Minister, Ms Mamata Banerjee, in her Budget speech, had admitted that the Railways alone could not meet the projected investment of Rs 14 lakh crore by 2020 and that more PPP projects were necessary.

Such projects were also being planned to modernise stations, improve public amenities, produce wagons, lay new lines and set up automobile hubs. The Ministry proposes to revise the policy in a year.

Source: Exim News Service

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Clarksons has revised its forecast for global box trade expansion to 9.4% for 2010

07.06.2010

CLARKSONS has revised its forecast for global box trade expansion to 9.4% for 2010 and now expects a return to double-digit growth in 2011, writes Janet Porter.

That represents a considerable adjustment from late last year when only a very modest push back into positive territory was anticipated for 2010. By January, growth of 5.2% was projected, with a further upwards adjustment to 7.5% made in April.

The latest forecast suggests that container trade volumes could total 136m TEU this year, according to Clarksons. But pre-recession levels will not be reached until at least 2011 when growth of 10.9% is forecast.

At the same time, expansion of the containership fleet remains subdued, with the non-delivery of scheduled additions so far this year running at around 40%, the London broker estimates. In April, though, slippage was less severe than in recent months, resulting in a slight upward adjustment in full year capacity growth to 7.2%.

Nevertheless, the shifting supply-demand balance is having a noticeable impact on the box markets, says Clarksons, with time charter rates, plus secondhand and new building values, all experiencing upwards movement.

Average prices for a 10-year-old 3,500 TEU panamax, for example, are up by more than 60% so far this year, reaching $25m last month from $15.5m at the end of 2009.

Indicative prices in the newbuild sector would put the cost of the same size ship at $41m compared with $36m last December.

Separately, Alphaliner estimates that extra slow steaming has created employment for almost 100 ships with a total capacity of 554,000 TEU. This compares with just five ships of 46,000 TEU 12 months ago.

The additional capacity employed as a result of slower speeds is forecast to reach 580,000 TEU by the beginning of July.

That is based on new services which are to slow steam, and announced plans to reduce speeds on existing service rotations, says Alphaliner.

It anticipates that the amount of capacity absorbed through slow steaming, which represents 4.1% of the total cellular fleet, could rise further by the end of the year.

Slower sailing speeds have now become the norm on the Asia-Europe and transpacific routes, where 78% and 53% respectively of all strings are running in slow steaming mode, Alphaliner says in its weekly report.

Vessels employed on these routes are currently operated in extra slow steaming mode of 17-19 knots, one step further down from ‘normal' slow steaming of 20-22 knots.

"Unlike the short-lived experiments made by carriers last year to route eastbound Europe-Asia services via the Cape of Good Hope, thus by-passing the Suez Canal to save on canal fees, the impact of slow steaming is expected to be more long-lasting," Alphaliner predicts.

Commenting on market conditions, Clarksons says there is "no doubt" the charter market is off the bottom and rising, with earnings now back above operating costs.

Signs of a return of ordering activity are also growing, with Chinese yards expected to be the first to land new contracts.

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