Congestion Hits Brazil’s Largest Port

March 23, 2021

By Ana Mano and Marcelo Teixeira (Reuters) – Soy and sugar traders are fighting for room in Latin America’s largest port, rushing to secure loading slots as the slowest Brazilian soy harvest in 10 years pushes the grains export window into the sugar season.

Congestion was hitting Brazil’s Santos port just as consumers worldwide have been turning to top exporter Brazil for sugar and soybean supplies. The glut of shipments waiting to leave is boosting transport costs and will likely delay arrivals at destinations.

Sugar prices hit a four-year high late last month, boosted by supply tightness. Soybean prices, already near seven-year highs, could rise further at a time when Brazil is effectively the world’s main supplier.

“It is a perfect storm, a combination of factors that are leading to soy and sugar to compete for logistics,” said Tiago Medeiros, Brazil head and executive director for Czarnikow Group, a food trader and supply chain services provider.

Brazil usually starts soybean exports in January, with volumes increasing in later months. This season, planting was delayed, as was the harvest, pushing that window further out. Shipments from the new sugar crop usually start around April, but companies are still shipping stocks from a bumper crop in 2020.

Brazil’s Agriculture Ministry saw sugar stocks at 7.3 million tonnes in mid-February, the highest for the last three years. Market players expect growing delays in coming months, with ships likely waiting several weeks before being able to dock in Santos. Medeiros noted that spot prices for both sugar and soybean futures are higher than deferred ones. This inverted chart position signals near-term supply tightness, he said, which could mean financial losses for sellers if they fail to deliver on time. “So everyone wants to get products out as soon as possible,” he said.

Most crops in Brazil are moved by truck, so truck freight costs spiked due to the rush of goods. Traders said shipowners sharply raised demurrage, the daily fee charged for port delays, from around $18,000 per day to $30,000 per day on trips to Brazil. Because of long vessel waiting times, French trader Sucden said India might be an alternate sugar supplier, but traders said its supply is constrained for several reasons. “Brazil mainly exports raws, while India has surplus of whites. So direct substitution is limited,” said a source at a large sugar trader in India.

SOY OPTIONS

Chinese soy buyers would normally turn to the United States to avoid Brazilian congestion, but U.S. farmers have little to offer. Due to strong demand, the United States will only have about 10 days worth of soybean supplies before the U.S. harvest starts in September. The U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast soybean stocks at the Aug. 31 end of the 2020/21 marketing year at 120 million bushels, down sharply from 525 million a year earlier. It would be the smallest ending stocks since 2013/14.

By mid-March, vessels were expected to load nearly 8.82 million tonnes of soybeans in Santos and Paranagua, the two largest Brazilian ports, 27% more than at this time last year, according to data from SA Commodities/Unimar shipping agency. Sugar loading at both ports was seen 71% up at 1.27 million tonnes. Traders controlling terminals in Santos such as Bunge and COFCO and logistics operators usually turn berths from grains to sugar as the year progresses. That job will be harder this year, the sources said. Last year, some vessels in Brazil waited as long as 45 days to load sugar at the key sugar terminal operated by Rumo SA .

“It will likely be worse,” said a U.S.-based sugar broker.

(Reporting by Ana Mano and Marcelo Teixeira; Additional reporting by Julie Ingwersen, in Chicago, Mayank Bhardwaj and Rajendra Jadhav, in New Delhi; Editing by David Gregorio, Reuters)

https://gcaptain.com/congestion-hits-brazils-largest-port/

Global Shipping Business Network officially incorporated in Hong Kong

Mar 17, 2021

Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN) has officially incorporated in Hong Kong and has commenced operations after securing the regulatory approvals.

GSBN is jointly established by major shipping lines and terminal operators including Cosco Shipping Lines, Cosco Shipping Ports, Hapag-Lloyd, Hutchison Ports, OOCL, SPG Qingdao Port, PSA International and Shanghai International Port Group, with an aim to accelerate the digital transformation of the shipping industry through the setup of a data exchange platform based on blockchain technology.

“The foundation of GSBN symbolizes an important milestone towards establishing an industry-wide, secure, digital collaboration platform that aims to benefit all parties in the global supply chain. GSBN will accelerate the sharing of verified logistics and cargo data, streamline business operations across the whole supply chain, and create value to each stakeholder,” said Martin Gnass, managing director IT of Hapag-Lloyd.

“The ability to collaborate in a trusted and secure manner is key for us to fully realise the opportunities from our increasingly digital and interdependent world. The GSBN platform will allow stakeholders and industry players to share timely information to facilitate downstream transactions and activities, with the assurance that their data is protected by strong data governance structures,” said Ho Ghim Siew, head of group commercial, strategy and cargo solutions, PSA International.

GSBN will open its membership in the coming months.

https://splash247.com/global-shipping-business-network-officially-incorporated-in-hong-kong/

Shipping’s trend towards delisting?

Leif Höegh bids to take Höegh LNG private in partnership with Morgan Stanley

Mar 8, 2021

Shipping’s trend towards delisting is picking up pace. Norwegian shipowner Leif Höegh revealed today it has teamed with Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners in a bid to take Höegh LNG private.

The two parties have formed a 50:50 joint venture, Larus Holding, to try and privatise the gas shipping player, whose fleet consists of 12 vessels, a mix of LNG gas carriers and FSRUs. Currently Leif Höegh and Morgan Stanley control 49.6% of Höegh LNG and are now offering NOK23.50 ($2.74) for each of the outstanding shares they do not own on the Oslo Bors, a premium of approximately 36% to the closing share price on Friday.

The board of Höegh LNG has unanimously approved the amalgamation agreement and determined to recommend the unaffiliated shareholders of the company to vote in favour of the transaction.

The consent of two-thirds of shareholders is needed for the privatisation to push ahead, something deemed likely to conclude within the first half of this year. An August 9 deadline has been put on the transaction.

Shipowners opting to take companies private was the lead story in the February issue of Splash Extra.

New York-listed LNG carrier specialist owner GasLog announced delisting plans last month, entering into a merger with BlackRock’s Global Energy & Power Infrastructure team. GasLog’s founder, Peter Livanos, said the new deal would allow “for access to growth capital currently absent in the public equity markets”.

The GasLog announcement marks the fifth shipping stock to exit Wall Street in the last 15 months.

Dagfinn Lunde, the founder of eShipfinance.com, told Splash Extra: “The debate – public versus private – will go on forever as both the shipping markets and the capital markets are both very volatile and mostly are not in sync.”

https://splash247.com/leif-hoegh-bids-to-take-hoegh-lng-private-in-partnership-with-morgan-stanley/

>>73747

Total you say?

Originally South Africa #4 >>13310683

“Mozambique Terror Attack | 1/1/ Around 180 people trapped in hotel”- https://youtu.be/fefiJIkoQpk

“As the stand-off between Isis-linked militants and Mozambican forces continues, News24 is reporting that President Cyril Ramaphosa will attend an urgent meeting on the crisis.”

“Multiple people trapped in Mozambique hotel after militant attack” - https://www.dw.com/en/multiple-people-trapped-in-mozambique-hotel-after-militant-attack/a-57022393

As militants launched an attack on Mozambique's Palma, workers are seeking refuge at the Amarula hotel. An operation is underway to rescue the workers, said the government.

More than 180 people are trapped inside a hotel in a town in northern Mozambique, as it has been under siege by insurgents for the last three days. Those trapped include expatriate workers.

Militants launched an attack on Wednesday afternoon, forcing locals to flee into surrounding forest areas.

The attacks occurred after French energy giant Total announced that work would gradually resume at the liquified natural gas project. Total is the principal investor in the region, with other firms such as ExxonMobil also involved in the area.

Some people have reportedly been killed, according to witnesses and rights groups, after the attack in Palma near a liquified natural gas site in Cabo Delgado province. Workers from the LNG site sought refuge in a local hotel. The military was trying to airlift workers from the hotel.

"Almost the entire town was destroyed. Many people are dead. As locals fled to the bush, workers from LNG companies, including foreigners, took refuge in hotel Amarula where they are waiting to be rescued," a worker told the AFP news agency, on the condition of anonymity.

An unverified video on social media showed an unidentified man filmed the hotel lobby showing several people milling around the patio. He described the situation in Palma as "critical" and added, "We don't know if we will be rescued."

He said the hotel had run out of food but still had water. The buzzing of a chopper could be heard in the background.

Rights group Human Rights Watch said on Friday, "Several witnesses told Human Rights Watch that they saw bodies on the streets and residents fleeing after the Al-Shabab fighters fired indiscriminately at people and buildings."

Palma had largely been cut off from the rest of the province, as insurgents made road travel unsafe, leaving only the airport and seaport as modes of transport.

Militants affiliated with the so-called Islamic State group have attacked several towns and villages in the region, causing nearly 700,000 to flee their homes.

New York’s Ever Given Crisis Is Bigger Than Egypt’s But Buttigieg Sits Silent

gCaptain

March 28, 2021

The cost of the mega containership Ever Given blocking Suez Canal traffic exceeds $9B a day but the cost of bringing these ships into poor and highly populated cities like Newark, New Jersey is much higher.

gCaptain (OpEd) When a mega containership like the Ever Given docks in the United States its over 20,000 TEU’s of containers are dumped on our cities and the environmental and health consequences and road damage is enormous. Our poorest children are dying, climate change is accelerating, and bridges are collapsing under the weight of heavy cargo boxes. This problem is bigger because in a few weeks the Ever Given will disappear from Suez but our cities will continue to be forever choked with boxes.

Last week President Biden promised to help Egypt solve the Ever Given mega-ship crisis in the Suez Canal but did not address the mega-ship crisis in his own country. He has not appointed anyone in charge of the government’s response to either crisis and the person in charge of transportation problems, Secretary Of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, has not spoken at all about either crisis.

Related Book: The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson

Months into the new administration, senior-level sources inside the Department of Transportation tell gCaptain they have made little to no progress in even appointing a Maritime Administrator of MARAD – who is the Commandant of the US Maritime Service and is equivalent to the director of the Federal Aviation Administration – and have made no significant progress on the last administration’s push to move containers off trucks and onto marine highways.

This is striking because both men promised to alleviate global warming concerns and fix infrastructure but neither has addressed the number one cause of both problems: the influx of goods aboard mega-ships.

In 2008 gCaptain first reported on the billions of dollars New York and New Jersey (or Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, Savannah, Jacksonville, Miami…) taxpayers will spend for the privilege of letting mega containerships like the Ever Given dump tens of thousands of shipping containers at a time on our roadways and bridges which will tear up our roads and bridges and run over pedestrians and spew toxic emissions across our highway system.

Thirteen years later and the problem is worse than anyone thought but a new bill sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer hopes to solve the problem by providing cities with $10 Billion to remove highways from crowded cities. The unanswered question is what will replace them? Will we move heavy shipping containers on electric cargo scooters? Noisy delivery drones? Elon Musk tunnels? The only logical answer is short sea distribution because cargo ferries consume one-tenth as much energy as trucks and one hundredth as much as drones.

In 1956, the Federal-Aid Highway Act, launched a $25 billion program to build the Interstate Highway System. The law, which encouraged highway construction across the country by offering 90% of the funding needed to build them, left behind a horrific legacy.

How horrific? Led by the infamous New York urban planner Robert Moses, cities took the money and paved highways along waterfronts and through neighborhoods. According to the Pulitzer prize-winning book The Power Broker, men like Moses ultimately brought down on the city the smog-choked aridity of our urban landscape, the endless miles of (never sufficient) highway, the hopeless sprawl of Long Island, the massive failures of public housing, and countless other barriers to humane living.

According to Stanford, toxic truck emissions costs the country over $790 billion per year in health care. 90% of city children breathe toxic air every day and smog kills 600,000 kids globally each year. That is over 1,600 dead children every single day.

The number one source of city air pollution comes from trucks on the highways that Schumer wants to be torn down.

And that’s not to mention direct fatalities. In 2017, 365 million tons of cargo entered, left, or passed through New York City, and at the current rate of e-commerce growth, that number is on track to balloon to 540 million by 2045. And truck accidents have killed so many people that they have become Vision Zero’s “Worst Offenders” to city safety.

But will Schumer’s bill fix all these problems?

“Probably not” says Captain John Konrad, founder of the short sea distribution company gShip. “Not unless money is added for short sea distribution, maritime innovation, and startups.“

More:

https://gcaptain.com/destroy-city-highways-schumer-marad/