PT.ZHONGHAI INDO SHIPPING

The slew of new intra-Asia services seen in 2010 continues. Evergreen Line and China Shipping Container Lines (CSCL) will launch a new joint service, the China-Philippines-Thailand Express Service (CPT) effective mid-March.
The new CPT service, which is expected to commence from Shanghai, will operate with three 2,500 teu vessels. Evergreen will deploy one vessel and two vessels will come from CSCL.
The port rotation is as follows:
Shanghai–Ningbo–Manila North Harbor–Manila South Harbor–Laem Chabang–Hong Kong–Shanghai
With China and the ASEAN countries forming a huge new trading bloc this year container lines have unveiled more intra-Asia services than has been seen for many years.

CHINA Shipping Container Line expects average market freight rates to be volatile this year, writes Hui Ching-hoo in Hong Kong. The Chinese container shipping giant said freight rates might see a dip at the end of the third quarter due to unstable economic conditions in Europe. But CSCL chairman Li Shaode said the global box shipping market had begun 2010 positively.  Mr Li pointed out that many suppliers had stockpiled inventories last year as the global economy plunged into recession, but now many of the suppliers had trimmed accumulated stocks on signs of gradual economic recovery.  CSCL raised its freight rate by $200-$500 per teu in January and another $50-$300 per teu in February as a result of the improving global economy.  His remarks reflected a spike by the China Container Freight Index, which soared 12.3% to 1,168 between January 26 and February 26 this year. Mr Li expects the market rebound of to carry through to the second and third quarters, although there may be a some downward pressure at the end of the third quarter in anticipation of worsening economies of some European nations such as Greece and Spain.

Vessels on the Asia-Europe trade averaging 99 per cent utilization in December on the headhaul leg, compared with the 80 per cent reported by AXS Alphaliner in June, this indicates that the shipping lines have managed to successfully manage one of its greatest challenges to date…
Between December and June, trade volumes also grew 16 per cent from 955,000 TEU per month to 1.1 million TEU per month, ensuring that the existing vessels on the trade remained busy.
A 9.47 per cent year-on-year hike in traffic on the westbound Asia-Europe leg in December marked the greatest improvement yet, while fourth quarter volumes witnessed only a slight decline of 0.05 per cent over the previous year. This too represented the best quarterly result for the year.
Meanwhile, eastbound shipments from Europe rose a dramatic 30.4 per cent year on year to 1.48 million TEU, according to the latest figures from the European Liner Affairs Association (ELAA).
To deal with the surge in volumes, especially in the months preceding the Chinese New Year, which reportedly led to the accumulation of cargo at Asian ports due to limited vessel capacity, carriers employed extra loaders of more than 30,000 TEU capacity in the four weeks preceding February 9, "roughly corresponding to an additional 7,000 TEU of weekly capacity" said Alphaliner.
Some of the carriers reported to have hired extra loaders are APL, CMA CGM , COSCO, CSCL, MAERSK and ZIM.