Latest / The Loadstar / News in Brief podcast | Week 42 2025 | Sanctions, strikes and sliding rates

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News in Brief podcast | Week 42 2025 | Sanctions, strikes and sliding rates · The Loadstar

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Hi, Charlotte Goldstone here, host of the Lodestars Weekly News in Brief podcast. Every week, thousands of shippers and freight professionals from across the world listen to our podcasts, whether on our website or their preferred streaming platform such as our podcast or Spotify. If you want your story to be told on one of our podcasts to this global audience, then please contact me on charlotteheloadstart.com to find out more. Good morning and welcome to the Lodestar Podcast News in Brief if you haven't joined us before, this podcast is to round up the last week's supply chain news and give you some insight on what you might see on the Lodestar this week. So last week we saw the impact of the strikes I mentioned in the last episode in the port of Antwerp, Bruges Antwerp Bruges Port Authority said it would take at least several days to clear a vessel and cargo backlog. More than 60 ships were waiting to depart and around 100 were waiting to enter the port. The pilots returned to work on Thursday and the union said it has suspended its action until the 24th of October. So they're paused for now, but we could see more strike action later this month. In Rotterdam, operations are also on a temporary return to normality, but the week long strike from lashing operatives means that it could take at least until the end of the month for the backlog to be cleared. Then, of course, the big news from last week came from the MEPC 84 meeting to decide on adopting the IMO's framework for net Zero Shipping. Now, I was at the IMO last month for London International Shipping Week and everyone seemed quite confident that it would be adopted. But before the meeting commenced where the countries would vote yes or no, the US sent out a statement saying that countries voting yes to the IMO's Net Zero framework to decarbonise shipping could face sanctions such as port fees or blocked entry for vessels flagged, owned or operated from said countries, as well as visa restrictions. The IMO's Net Zero framework had to be adopted by a two thirds majority of the parties to the convention present and voting. That was 108 countries, representing more than 97% of the world's most merchant shipping fleet by tonnage. The US threats put a bit of a question mark on what the outcome would be, and at the time of recording, rumors are that it will not be adopted or it will be seriously delayed. But something that last week did give a bit more clarity on was the impact of China's retaliatory Port call fees in response to the US Trade representative fees of vessels calling at US ports. I'm now joined by Gavin Van Maal to talk us through it. Gav, what is the scope and what are the figures that we're looking at?
• 2:46
  Speaker B: Well the figures are almost identical in the amount levered by the US and its USTR fees. It's 400 renminbi which at today's exchange rate works out $50 per net tonne. And it applies to the following ships, a ship flying the US flag, a vessel built in the US or owned by the US and it's this third point which is really quite murky Charlotte. Because China has identified ownership as amounting to 25% of a company, if it's owned by US firms then it's liable to these fees. And because you've got so many shipping firms, particularly sort of non operating ship owners that are listed in New York and have large amounts of their stock publicly traded, assessing that 25% threshold is very difficult because apart from anything else it's a moving target. Right. You know, the ownership structure by its very nature of a listed company constantly fluctuates. I mean you can see why the Chinese are doing it because it is very much a tit for tat thing but, but the collateral damage could be extensive. There is one caveat to this which is that a ship is exempt if it was built in China. So anyway, that said we've started to see the impact of it. I mean we'd said before that Matson was one of the carriers the most exposed to the Chinese thieves and indeed one of its vessels, the Matson Waikiki, paid $1.7 million this week for a Shanghai call. That's a 4870 TEU box ship. So that starts to give you an idea of what the levy of the fee is. So on the basis of that, if that vessel was fully loaded then we're looking at an extra cost of $700 per 40 foot container, which is quite a lot. You know we read another story last week. The Gemini partners have one of their Trans Pacific Services, the WC5 and it's mucked by Maersk as the TP7 which runs on its eastbound rotation I. E. The backhaul trip from North America to Asia runs Los Angeles, Yokohama, Busan and Ningbo. And in the middle of last week it was advised by the carriers that the next two sailings at least will stop at Blue and any cargo to or from Nimbo will have to be shuttled from there. And I looked into the databases following this advisory and basically the reason for this is that those two vessels are US flagged and this is services operated by six ships. In fact, all of the ships on the service are US flagged ships. So one can only assume that Maersk and Hapag are busily reshuffling their fleet around to restart this service with the direct call into China. But obviously deploying ships that are compliant with the Chinese port fees.
• 5:44
  Speaker C: Yeah, it's all quite confusing because I mean, following the USTR fees it seemed like everyone was a bit put off buying Chinese built vessels. But now maybe people will be happy to do it again.
• 5:54
  Speaker B: I mean, whereas the USTR fees, you know, like you, like you say, I mean they, they really largely affect the Trans Pacific and transatlantic trades and so far they can mostly be null by the fact that there's enough South Korean and Japanese vessels to replace them. But the reciprocal Chinese measure effectively could affect any trade in and out of China. Should Beijing determine that a New York listed non operating ship owner breaches the 25% level and the fee can be applied to its ship. So you could have a situation where you've got traders from all over the world that might suddenly be subject to extra surcharges on these things because you know, a vessel, say on an interasia trade or coming in from Africa, suddenly it's declared, oh no, you chartered that ship from Company X and that's got over 25% shareholding. Here's your fee. Let's say it's a 4,000 TU ship. Well, right, we know that's going to be the best part of $2 million. The carrier's going to have to recoup those costs. Are they going to suddenly be turning around to, I don't know, a Kenyan importer of Chinese consumer goods or a Bangladeshi importer of raw textile ma. Are they suddenly going to be liable for these fees that are part of a trade war in which they have absolutely no stake in whatsoever? So there's a lot of ramifications that could come out.
• 7:17
  Speaker C: Yeah, a lot for people to keep up with. Luckily we are reporting on all the updates@theloadstart.com but despite all this news coming out about the Trans Pacific and all the volatility we've seen there, one carrier alliance has not been deterred in terms of capacity offered. You reported a bit of an analysis about which alliances and carriers are the most present on certain trades. So what are the results?
• 7:39
  Speaker B: Well, the basic findings derived from analysis by Fee Intelligence Consulting and this is according to the forward schedules of the alliances, that the Ocean alliance continues to increase its capacity across all the trades, while the others, and we're talking Gemini, Premier alliance, standalone MSC and even independent operators on certain routes, the others are either trimming capacity or holding steady. And that's basically how the situation stands today. So at least on three trades, Trans Pacific to the US West Coast, Asia North America east coast and Asia North Europe, the ocean lines by several percentage points and I'm talking 10 to 15 percentage points here provides a lot more capacity. It's slightly more mixed on the Asia Mediterranean. There's more of a balance in market shares there. But yeah, that's as it stands today. Charlotte. I'm personally I'm not sure if it will continue to do so. I think that picture probably changed through the fourth quarter because if the freight rate war that we've sort of talked about, we think we're in the early stages of it at the moment and if it really breaks out into the sort of open conflict that we've seen a few times in the past, then having all that capacity on the water will leave the Ocean alliance members quite severely exposed.
• 9:03
  Speaker C: Well, I did want to ask you about rates. We've seen a long string of rate decline and I had some information from a shipping source who is looking at contracting right now and they said that everyone is expecting an aggressive push for 1 November increases from the carriers. But they said that the reality is that contract rates are probably going to be softer this year. So what are the indices telling us?
• 9:22
  Speaker B: Well, as per Friday and the most recent Shanghai Containerized Freight Index in the previous days, Drury's World Container Index, they're telling us that the 15 October FAK hikes on Asia Europe and the GRIS on the Trans Pacific on the same day were partially successful. I mean they brought an end to what's amounted to what, 17 weeks of successive declines. So as we kind of predicted, the hikes have arrested the decline. Spot rates was 7% up on Asia North Europe, they were 2% up to the meds and they were 1% up on both Trans Pacific routes. So I think most of the expectation is that they will glide again. But yeah, I've heard the same from my sources that there are some other rate increases being lined. I mean they've already been published on the Trans Pacific. There's another series of gris coming in on 1st November. Whether it's an aggressive push on 1st November or whether there's an aggressive push around 15th November, MSC released new FAK rates for 15th November. On the Asia Europe trades last week we will see how aggressive. But I mean it's very difficult given the amount of capacity that's in the market and I mean globally on this, it's very difficult to see how carriers would be able to achieve contract rates that are above what they achieved at this time last year. You just can't see that happening because the supply, demand balance isn't there to affect that result.
• 10:58
  Speaker C: Yeah, I'll be really intrigued to see how it plays out for the rest of the year. Thank you so much for joining me this week, Gav.
• 11:03
  Speaker B: You're very welcome, Charlotte.
• 11:04
  Speaker C: I'm now joined by Alex Linane to discuss the air freight news from last week. Thanks for joining me Alex.
• 11:10
  Speaker D: Hey Charlotte.
• 11:11
  Speaker C: Alex, before I ask you about stories you've covered, I just want to shout out the event I was at last week, Aviation Connect. I went to Copenhagen for the event and it was a great week. Parveen did an excellent job of organizing. So shout out to her if she's listening. I had some interviews there. One was with Chalebi Aviation, which is a ground handler and they told me that they were focusing on emerging markets in the wake of the suspension of their operations in India. They said that particularly Europe and the E commerce boom was a big factor of growth for them. Plus Indonesia was an area that they were interested in. There was also some good insight about the impact of the E commerce boom on road feeder services. And Wallenborn was saying that the seemingly random hubs that were becoming E commerce hotspots such as Oslo they mentioned was causing them to have to reshuffle capacity at very last minute. E commerce seems to be a really big topic at the moment. You had a story about this last week and how it was impacting things in Europe. What did you hear?
• 12:13
  Speaker D: Well, yeah, it was lucky really. I happened to be in Scotland and as you do started wondering about its exports. So I got in touch with Glasgow Prestwick to see how things were going and it so happened that another Chinese airline has just started services there. This time it's Beijing Capital which is bringing in E commerce and taking out salmon and whisky. Prestwick, like many secondary airports, has invested in E commerce and the cold chain actually. So we took a little look at what's going on at Prestwick and compared it with Bournemouth which has also just announced the completion of major cargo infrastructure projects there and it too is hoping for more E commerce. So it's a big change in the UK from how things were a decade or so ago when Heathrow and the East Midlands pretty much the main focus for cargo. One contender we haven't looked at yet though is Birmingham Airport, but we will be covering that soon.
• 13:08
  Speaker C: I mean, if Prestwick are giving them salmon and whiskey in exchange for e commerce, then Birmingham and Bournemouth have got to pull something good out. And kind of on this e commerce topic, there was quite a bit last week about the issues we're starting to find it hard to ignore surrounding the end of the de minimis exemption in the US which impacts low value goods that mostly are E commerce. First, there was an announcement from UPS that they were disposing of parcels that have been stuck in their system. What's this about?
• 13:33
  Speaker D: Yeah, it's quite a shocking story to be honest. So problems with the clearance processes in the US following the end of the de minimis exemption left UPS with apparently thousands of parcels in its system worth tens of thousands of dollars. Now, if the parcels can't be returned at the owner's expense, obviously not UPS's, then they will be destroyed in what has been labeled a systemic breakdown. So best of luck to UPS's customers there. But it does sound like a bit of a horror show.
• 14:05
  Speaker C: Yeah, that sounds really serious. But I believe you also had some advice from Flexport about how to best cope with the de minimis related stress. What wisdom did they have for us?
• 14:14
  Speaker D: Well, I don't want to be accused of being a sort of marketing person for Flexport, but I did watch their product release event which was quite rock starry in that way that those tech companies do. It was quite funny really. But they were announcing a range of AI supported tools to help customers navigate this new environment now that E commerce has been rather upended and shippers are having to rethink their fulfillment and custom strategies. So Flexport, which is always talking about making trade much simpler, thinks it has the answers.
• 14:47
  Speaker C: I also saw, just quickly, I want to talk about. I saw that the US plan to stop Chinese airlines overflying Russia has been expanded somewhat.
• 14:56
  Speaker D: Well, yes, in its comments on the proposal, US freighter operator national has urged the US Department of Transport to ban any foreign cargo carrier from overflying Russia on its way to the US which is quite significant. It actually named Qatar, Etihad, Emirates, the normal US Middle Eastern carrier flights. But there's been talk in Europe of some sort of similar deal. Perhaps. But Tiakos Gurn Hughes told us that these unilateral moves are not a very good thing for the industry. So any sort of tit for tat overflight bans won't be good for air cargo in general. That's not to say they won't happen though.
• 15:39
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 15:39
  Speaker C: It just seems like another thing for the industry to have to bear in mind. And obviously something else that has been a bit of a struggle has been cybercrime, and we spoke about Flexport, but another forwarder that everyone loves to hear about is dsv, and they were in the headlines last week because they had been impacted by cybercrime.
• 15:57
  Speaker D: What happened? Well, yeah, it's not just about DSV actually, but there is a new cyber attacker in town which appears to be targeting logistics businesses specifically. It's called the Coinbase Cartel. It's new to the scene and it differs from other cyber attackers by focusing only on data exfiltration and staged data leaks. Now, DSP was named by them, as was Kooner Nagel and Siva Logistics for a short time and then the name was removed. We spoke to a cyber attack prevention company called Dynaris, which told us that that tends to mean that negotiations are ongoing and the short post might have just been a way to pressure the company to continue talks or to make payments. Dsp, of course, declined to confirm or deny it, but it did say its systems were all operational, while Kuhner and Nagel said that they couldn't actually see a data breach and they thought everything was okay. But I think we're going to see more and more of these and we'll never really know whether the companies are going to pay the ransom or whether there's another way around this. This story was also covered in quite a lot more detail by Lodestar Premium. For anyone who's interested, could you give.
• 17:09
  Speaker C: Us some more insight about what else has been on Lodestar Premium?
• 17:12
  Speaker D: Yeah, sure. In fact, actually, before we do that, there are a couple more exclusives from the Lodestar that are definitely worth mention. One is the surcharge route at Chittagong Port, which has seen the Port Authority cancel licenses for both Maersk and CNA CGM ships. It's quite a fascinating tale and one worth following. But there's also a really good analysis of the future for nuclear fuel on ships by our environment correspondent. Definitely worth a read. Over in Premium, earnings season is starting. So far we've had JB Hunt at Premium last week, also had a look at rail mergers and CSX. There was an analysis of the FMC's D&D rules as well as a piece on U.S. customs and a look at Walmart's AI play, so quite a wide ranging, a lot of things there.
• 18:01
  Speaker C: Thank you very much Alex.
• 18:02
  Speaker D: Thanks Charlotte.
• 18:10
  Speaker A: So now we have rounded up all the main points from last week's supply chain news. Here is what you might see coming up on the Lodestar. I've got a few more stories to come from Aviation Connect. There are insights on airline standards and how they are changing from my interview with Cargo iq. Plus Alex Whiteman will have a few more insights from the DHL team after his recent trip to chat about their global connectedness in index. I am also headed to the International Chamber of Shipping in London to interview Ocean Scores Managing Director Albrecht Grehl on updates to ETS and decarbonisation in shipping in general, of course, with questions post mepc84 and what it means for global emissions regulations. Alex and Nain will also be taking a look at Anchorage Airport and how it has been impacted by tariffs, if at all. All this and more to come on the Lodestar, so make sure you don't miss a thing by keeping up to date on our website or on our LinkedIn page. Thank you so much and I will see you next week.