For many importers, the most expensive supply chain disruptions no longer begin in the middle of the ocean. They begin after the container reaches the port. A shipment arrives on schedule, clears discharge, and appears to be moving normally. Then the warehouse receiving window shifts. The drayage carrier cannot secure a new appointment quickly enough. Containers sit at the terminal while warehouse teams, transportation planners, and carriers exchange emails and spreadsheets t

The latest sustainability reports from ONE, Hapag-Lloyd, Maersk and OOCL point to meaningful investments in more efficient vessels, alternative fuels, route planning and technologies that reduce fuel consumption. Yet the data also reveal the limits of that progress: absolute emissions have increased at some companies, most energy still comes from fossil fuels, and vessels described as “future-ready” may continue operating on conventional fuel for years. Shipping cannot become

A shipping container ship can be rerouted around a blocked strait. A truck that can't get through a congested port gate is a harder problem to solve. That distinction now sits at the center of maritime risk planning. Recent comments from the heads of Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd pointed to a shift: geopolitical disruption in chokepoints like the Red Sea remains real, but port congestion and inland capacity constraints are increasingly the bigger day-to-day threat to schedule reliab

The latest escalation around Bab el-Mandeb has turned a familiar routing problem into a more immediate operational risk. Following the Houthi takeover of Perim Island, which divides the strait into two shipping lanes, carriers must assess not only whether to enter the Red Sea but whether the vessel, cargo, insurance cover and available security measures justify the transit. For shippers, the first problem is often a lack of control. A booking may identify a service through th

Pressure on Bab el-Mandeb is no longer an isolated shipping disruption. The Houthi expansion along Yemen’s Red Sea coast comes as traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is also severely constrained, narrowing the alternatives available for moving energy and commercial cargo out of the region. For supply-chain teams, the problem extends beyond selecting a longer route. Rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope can add days or weeks in transit, tying up working capital and changing

A container ship that misses its berthing window at Yangshan by a few hours can end up anchored offshore for a week or more, accruing detention and demurrage charges while downstream customers wait on cargo that should already be moving. That is the position many shippers connected to Shanghai and Ningbo-Zhoushan found themselves in after a typhoon swept through East China's coastline this year. The storm itself lasted days. The congestion it left behind is still working thro

Taiwan’s Maritime and Port Bureau told The Supply Chainer: “The penalties targeted the operators’ agreement to coordinate fee collection, while individual operators remain free to set and register their own tariffs without government intervention.” A Taiwanese court ruling against 21 container freight station operators has reinforced a principle with direct consequences for exporters: terminal operators may determine their own charges, but they cannot coordinate those decisio

A vessel schedule slips by four days. The cargo is financed, the buyer's credit line is already drawn against goods still at sea, and the lender finds out when the documents catch up - sometimes weeks later. Working capital sits frozen in that gap. Trade finance has always run on evidence of what already happened. Predictive logistics vendors now argue that forecasts are accurate enough to underwrite against. That is a different claim than the one visibility platforms made fi

Trucks queued at the Port of Wilmington while clerks worked gate transactions by hand. Nothing had happened to a crane, a chassis or a gate reader. An intrusion detected on August 4 forced North Carolina Ports to isolate core systems, and the resulting outage pushed Wilmington, Morehead City and the Charlotte Inland Port onto manual processing at the same time. Wilmington alone averages roughly 5,000 container gate moves a week, and the two deepwater sites together handle 4.4

The erosion of duty-free thresholds is turning cross-border parcel shipping into a more complex operational problem for e-commerce retailers, particularly those built around high volumes of relatively low-value international orders. As more shipments become subject to duties, customs declarations and variable clearance processes, retailers face pressure not only on margins but across checkout, fulfilment, carrier selection and customer experience. For logistics and e-commerce

China has launched its first regular container shipping service to Europe through the Arctic, opening a potentially significant new route for supply chains seeking shorter transit times and alternatives to the Suez Canal and Red Sea. The first sailing, operated by Chinese carrier Sea Legend Shipping, departed Ningbo-Zhoushan on August 15 aboard the Dubai Tower, a container vessel with capacity of around 1,740 TEU. The ship is scheduled to reach Felixstowe in the UK on Septemb

European importers navigating volatile freight cycles are rediscovering inland waterways as operational ballast when ocean spot rates swing and road capacity tightens. A single barge moves the cargo equivalent of dozens of lorries, reducing...