Newsletter – March 18, 2024

East coast port strike threat prompts shippers to consider heading west instead
theloadstar.com
Cargo owners have been advised to make contingency plans for a strike at US east and Gulf coast ports that could hit traffic flows as early as 1 October, right in the peak shipping season.
The six-year labour contact between the International Longshoremen Association (ILA) and United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), covering ports on the eastern US coastline, is set to expire on 30 September. Read more here (login required).

Leader of Yemen’s Houthis vows to attack more shipping lanes
reuters.com
CAIRO, March 14 (Reuters) – The leader of Yemen’s Houthis, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, said on Thursday the group’s operations targeting vessels will escalate to prevent Israel-linked ships from passing through the Indian Ocean towards the Cape of Good Hope.
“Our main battle is to prevent ships linked to the Israeli enemy from passing through not only the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, but also the Indian Ocean towards the Cape of Good Hope. This is a major step and we have begun to implement our operations related to it,” al-Houthi said in a televised speech. Read more here.

VIDEO: Yang Ming vessel hits Turkish quay and takes out cranes
theloadstar.com
Here’s the moment, on Saturday, when the 14,000 teu YM Witness took out most of the cranes at Turkey’s Evyap Port in the Gulf of Izmit, east of Istanbul.
No fatalities or injuries to crew or dockworkers have been reported, but the terminal is likely to be out of action for months, judging by the way the ship-to-shore cranes toppled at the DP World-operated terminal – according to the terminal, it has four quay cranes in operation and at least three of them can be seen collapsing in this video, while the fourth appears to have escaped sustained damage. Read more here (login required).

Ocean Alliance launches Day 8 network – but it’s light on detail
theloadstar.com
Following the recent renewal of their cooperation until 2032, the Ocean Alliance members have launched their new east-west network for the year.
However, details of the Day 8 product – it is the eighth year of the alliance’s operation – were relatively scant, suggesting that vessels have yet to be assigned to specific services and there are still questions over port rotations, understandable given the current uncertainty over Red Sea transit. Read more here (login required).

Threat of strike looms large over East, Gulf Coast ports
freightwaves.com
There’s an increasing abundance of skittishness surrounding the future of East and Gulf Coast ports.
The labor contract between the International Longshoremen’s Association and the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) is set to expire at the end of September. The ILA represents some 70,000 dockworkers, while the USMX represents employers at 36 coastal ports — including three of the U.S.’s five busiest ports: the Port of New York and New Jersey, the Port of Savannah, Georgia, and the Port of Houston. Read more here.