Maritime Industry on Alert amid – Zika Outbreak!

Due to the outbreak of the Zika virus, the maritime industry is on standby for any evidence of any symtoms of the virus that vessel crewmembers or passengers might be experiencing, according to GAC

As the World Health Organization designated the Zika virus as a global public health emergency, all vessel and facility representatives were urged to report any signs of hazardous conditions and illnesses within the last 15 days to the Center for Disease Control (CDC).

 Cruise line companies have already started informing their passengers about the virus and, because of a possible link between birth defects and Zika infection during pregnancy, the lines are allowing pregnant women to change itineraries or cancel their trips.

The virus has spread throughout America since it was first detected in May 2015 in Brazil.

Zika is a virus that is spread by mosquitoes, and in rare cases it may be spread via blood transfusions, sexual contact, and from mother to child in the womb.

 Most people who get Zika will not have any symptoms, however, those who do get symptoms could experience a fever, rash, joint pain, conjunctivitis, and muscle pain or a headache.

It is uncommon for people infected with the Zika virus to require hospitalization, and deaths are rare.

GAC called on the seafarers to take preventive measures to avoid mosquito bites including avoiding/limiting outdoor activities one hour before and after dusk and dawn, when mosquitoes are most active; covering exposed skin; and using insect repellents.

Prior to 2015, Zika virus outbreaks occurred in areas of Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands. In May 2015, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) issued an alert regarding the first confirmed Zika virus infections in Brazil. Currently, outbreaks are occurring in many countries. The virus will continue to spread and it will be difficult to determine how and where the virus will spread over time.

 The irony of the matter is that, while India has no reported cases of the dreaded Zika virus infection as of date, it is the first country in the world to have not one but two ready for testing vaccines against the virus.

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2016 Another Challenging Year for Shipping

The shipping industry can expect an uncertain and lower level profit as the support from China, one of the most important drivers of shipping demand growth in recent times, is re-evaluating its future growth direction.

On the other hand, Europe and Japan, in particular, look like they might provide positive surprises in 2016. The European Central Bank and Bank of Japan are continuously seeking to boost their economies to bring on the sustainable recovery that everyone needs.

 For the dry bulk sector in 2016, the supply-side growth is expected to come down from (2.6% in 2015 according to BIMCO) in view of a new record level of scrapping. On the demand side, growth is forecast to remain level. Challenging market conditions in China will be likely to affect the level of risk. What we have in today’s BDI index is the lowest from 1985 at 290 points and if compared when we had a boom in May 2008 it was as high as 11793 points. It’s a vertical nose dive and with the Chinese economy in a slump, Chinese imports have died down. Surplus tonnage still exists due to lack of cargo movement between trading countries.

With respect to the tanker market, after the perfect storm a steadier year awaits both the crude oil tanker and oil product tanker markets.

The two sectors enjoyed an extraordinarily strong freight market throughout 2015, ignited by the drop in oil prices that began in mid-2014 and supported by a relatively low supply-side growth in 2015. It was the best year for all oil tankers since the market crashed in late 2008.

However, going forward, the significant building of oil stocks in 2015 may slow down tanker demand growth somewhat in 2016.

BIMCO expects Iran’s return to the crude oil export market in 2016 to disrupt current trade patterns.

The multi-year slide in the crude oil tanker fleet growth was reversed in 2015. The crude oil segment is expected to see a fleet growth of around 4.5% in 2016 (2.3% in 2015). As the demand-side growth is unlikely to reach the same high level, downward pressure on freight rates will follow.

With respect to container shipping, there is a need for growth on key trade lanes to restore market dynamics.

Disappointing European demand for containerized goods versus the strong growth of imports into the US slowed the demand for container ships significantly. At the same time, 900,000 TEU worth of ultra large container ship capacity was delivered. Overall, the market imbalance worsened as the supply-side rose to a four-year high (8.0% in 2015) while the demand-side growth rate hit a three-year low. The lack of head haul volume growth on the Asia to Europe trading lane was particularly worrisome as it accelerated the heavy cascade of ships clogging up other parts of the network.

 Going forward, what is needed to revive European imports of containerized goods is for the Euro to strengthen against the Rimini and for retailers to begin restocking again.

BIMCO believes that the crucial thing for the industry is to improve the fundamental market balance in 2016.

As the lower “new normal” GDP-to-trade multiplier limits the potential upside of the demand side, careful management of deployed capacity by the individual operators is still of utmost importance. Last year did not ease the imbalance as more than 1.6m TEU was delivered in 2015.

 After a record for new capacity entering the market in last year, 2016 is set for a much lower influx at around 3.5%. This is not sufficient and means the challenging market conditions for container shipping will extend for another year.

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Development of Sagar Island Port

Sagar Island is an island in the Ganges delta, lying on the continental shelf of the Bay of Bengal about 150km south of Kolkata. The island is large, with an area of about 300 km2 (length 30km * width 10km). Although the island is in the sunderban delta, it does not have any tiger habitation or mangrove forests or small river tributaries.

The island is also known as Gangasagar or Sagardwip and is a place of pilgrimage. Every year on Makar Sankranti (January 14th) day, lacs of pilgrims take a holy dip in the confluence of river Ganges and Bay of Bengal and offer prayers.

Presently, and for the last over 50 years, Sagar roads (off Sagar island in the river Hooghly) is being utilized as an anchorage port, as the draft is better (8.5 to 9.6m) when compared to Kolkata (5.2 to 7.7m) and Haldia (6.6 to 8.0m). The drafts vary on a daily basis and also according to season, depending on the height of tide above chart datum above the sand bars in the river Hooghly. (Aforesaid drafts obtained from KoPTs draft prediction for February 2016)

In order to overcome the severe draft restrictions and vessel size limitations in the ports of Kolkata and Haldia, it is planned to set up a new port on the south west bank of Sagar Island. Some of the highlights of the Sagar Island port development project are given below:

- Project cost about Rs. 12000 crores.
- Through capital dredging, draft to be enhanced to 12m in phase I which will be increased further. It is possible to enter into a draft more easily at Sagar Island, Kolkata and Haldia as they are closer to Bay of Bengal by about 75km from Eastern Channel light at Sandheads.
- Cargoes: Dry- bulk and containers Dry- Bulk: Coking coal, thermal coal, coke, iron ore, fertilizers, etc. Cargo volume in phase I, about 50 million tonnes per annum.
- Construction of a 4-lane rail-cum-road bridge between mainland and Sagar Island to provide connectivity to national rail and highways network.
- Land required for port development, about 2000acres and will be allocated by Govt. of West Bengal.
- Joint venture between KoPT (74%) and Govt. of West Bengal (26%)
- Estimated date of completion of Phase I, by 2019.

Work on the development of Sagar Port is expected to start soon and a major part of which is dredging. Boston Consulting Group has suggested a new dredging plan which is being studied by IIT Chennai. Indications are that this would bring down the dredging cost by about 50 per cent.

 On completion, the port facilities at Sagar Island, Haldia and Kolkata will function as an integrated river-port system and cargoes will be handled by three modes; river, rail and road.

 Development of Sagar Island port is indeed a very welcome development as it would benefit the eastern and north – eastern regions, trade and shipping industry as there has been a long felt need for a suitable deep water port in the region.

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Container weight verification – mandatory requirement!

Under-declaration of container weights and indeed unsafe loading in containers has been responsible for many serious accidents and was implicated in the sinking of the MSC Napoli in 2007.

Any one overweight or badly loaded container can have a huge impact on others once loaded onto a large ship. The potential for a disaster is a very real one and it can also be attributed to issues on land such as trucking accidents and overweight cargo falling through the bottom of containers.

Weight or loading discrepancies might explain why around 10,000 boxes are washed overboard every year, according to official statistics given by ICHCA. The issue of misdeclared goods, violations involving dangerous cargoes, poor or incorrect packing and wrongly declared container masses can each lead to erratic centers of gravity of ships, which can cause instability or negative stability, which could eventually lead to a vessel capsizing.

 In order to address safety problems at sea and on shore arising from container shipments that have incorrect weight declarations, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) adopted amendments to the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) Convention, Chapter VI Regulation 2 – Cargo information regarding a mandatory container gross weight verification.

The SOLAS amendments were adopted in November 2014 and will enter into force on the 1st of July 2016. The intervening period should be considered to be the transition or planning period. Thus, all regulated parties need to be prepared to implement and abide by the container weight verification requirements by 1 July 2016. This period should also allow time for regulated parties to prepare for required process and documentation changes and to test information transmission enhancements in advance of the effective date.

The effect of these requirements on containerized supply chains is that the verification of the gross weight of a packed export container will be required before the container is loaded aboard a ship. To ensure compliance with the SOLAS amendments, participants within the supply chain (especially shippers, carriers, way bridges and terminal operators) will need to establish and implement processes to ensure that the verified container weights are provided to the necessary parties in a timely fashion and are used by the terminal operator and vessel operator in the vessel’s container stowage plan.

The purpose of the SOLAS amendments is to protect vessels, cargo and the environment and to obtain an accurate gross weight of packed containers that are moved through the supply chain prior to loading aboard the ship. The responsibility for obtaining and documenting the verified gross weight of a packed container lies with the shipper.

Under the new regulations, boxes will have to be weighed and verified before loading. However, it is still unclear where this can realistically be carried out in the Supply Chain as once loaded on a truck or lifted by a quay crane it would effectively be too late, thus the problem of overweight shipping containers could continue for a number of years, despite a recent vote in the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to amend its Safety of Life at Sea (Solas) Convention, which would see the production of a verified weight certificate before a container is loaded onto a ship.

 It is also pointed out that the new regulations only cover one aspect of the problems in working with containers and would do very little when it comes to improving safety standards within the shipping industry as a whole.

Are we prepared today, to follow the processes of the regulation? In the present context, with regards to the regulation, there is still a lot of processes to be put into place to be able to successfully implement this regulation (For eg: way stations- adequate no. of way bridges are approved by the admin of each country however the weighing standards are not regularized and tolerance levels with reference to container weight - the allowable container gross mass differs from country to country.) There needs to be proper co-ordination between all the countries so as to come to a common ground to address the above issue.

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Global Marine Technology Trends – Development of Technomax Ships by 2030

The international shipping industry has always been technology driven from the earliest of times. Ship design and construction, machinery and equipment, cargo handling, navigation and communications, efficient ship operations, safety and environmental considerations, computerization and automation, well-educated and trained manpower (ship and shore) etc. are in a continuous state of development to keep abreast of technology. In recent times, the major difference is the speed at which technology is advancing.

Technology development is accelerating and will continue to do so. It is strongly indicated that the phase of technological development will not slow down any time soon, nor will the trend towards the increasingly integrated nature of technology applications reverse. While the technology revolutions are extensive it will plan out differently in commercial shipping, naval and to ocean space sectors. In this regard, we congratulate and compliment the collaborative project between Llyod’s Register, QuinetiQ and the University of Southampton which has resulted in the release and publication of their study, namely, “Global Marine Technology Trends, 2030” (GMTT 2030). Some of the highlights of the study are given below.

The marine technology of 2030 will integrate developments from multiple scientific disciplines in ways that would transform the design, construction and operation of commercial ships, naval assets, & ocean space equipment and systems.

So within fifteen years, we may indeed see what they describe as “TechnoMax” ships emerging from shipyards, packed with new materials, sophisticated systems, chattering away to their owners’ offices with floods of Big Data and able to deliver more precision and efficiency.

“Technomax ships” will require fundamental changes in terms of design, construction, operation and supply chain management. These ships will be smarter, data driven, greener, with flexible powering options, fully connected wireless onboard, digitally connected through global satellites.

On advances in propulsion and powering; it includes future engines alternative fuels, propulsion energy saving devices, renewable sources of energy, hybrid power generation, emissions abatement, combustion mapping, heat flows, remote monitoring of new, intelligent engines, etc.

The overall efficiency of the propulsion plant will be enhanced with the use of new materials, such as grapheme and its alloys, in heat exchangers and condenser piping. This will improve the overall thermal efficiency and will reduce maintenance and chemical dosing.

Advanced materials, including future composites, nano-impregnated metals, new alloys and substances with biologically- inspired protection, including self-repairing materials.

While metal will continue to dominate ship building, the emergence of alternatives with high strength to weight ratios will offer the opportunity of better fuel economy and higher cargo capacity.

The ship building industry in 2030 will feature higher levels of automation, high-fidelity design software integration, human- computer interfaces, etc. These advances will further bring about developments in ships structures, hull forms, and ability to optimize different loading conditions, speed profiles and reduced ballast to reduce the effect of marine invasive species.

Enhanced big data analytics, driven by communications and sensor improvements will lead to different approaches to decision making, asset management, condition monitoring and surveying. Use of autonomous robotics and remote controlled robots are further areas of development.

The above developments of technology and “technomax” ships by 2030 will require the shipping industry to gear up for the fast approaching changes, develop new skills and re-train shore and fleet personnel.

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“Indispensable Shipping” – Theme for World Maritime Day 2016 Launched

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations with 168 Member States and three Associate Members. IMO’s main task is to develop and maintain a comprehensive regulatory framework for shipping that includes safety, environmental concerns, legal matters, technical co-operation, maritime security and the efficiency of shipping. 

 Every year the International Maritime Organization (IMO) celebrates World Maritime Day (WMD) to focus attention on the importance of shipping safety, maritime security and the marine environment and to emphasize a particular aspect of IMO’s work. The day also features a special message from the IMO’s secretary general, which is backed up by a discussion paper on the selected subject in more detail. The theme for 2015 was “Maritime education and training”, focusing attention on the importance of adequate education and training to ensure a safe, secure and sustainable shipping industry.

World Maritime Day is celebrated in many countries worldwide, including India. Special events and activities are held to celebrate the day, including a symposium/seminar on the theme of the event as conveyed by IMO.

The critical link between shipping and global society is the main focus for this year’s World Maritime Day theme: "Shipping: Indispensable to the world".

The theme for 2016 was launched by IMO Secretary-General as he opened the Sub-Committee meeting on Ship Design and Construction on 18^th January, 2016. This year, WMD will be celebrated at IMO headquarters on Thursday September 29^th.

Since 2005, in addition to the official IMO celebrations held at IMO Headquarters in London there has been a parallel event hosted by a Member State. This year’s annual parallel event will be held in Turkey in November 2016.

The international shipping industry carries around 90% of world trade. Without shipping the import and export of goods on the scale necessary to sustain the modern world would not be possible. Seaborne trade continues to expand, bringing benefits for consumers across the world through competitive freight costs. Hence, shipping is indispensable to world trade and economy.

There are more than 50,000 merchant ships trading internationally, transporting every kind of cargo. The world fleet is registered in over 150 nations and manned by more than a million seafarers of virtually every nationality.

India, as a Member state of IMO and a significant contributor to world shipping and maritime manpower, would continue to support IMO, participate actively in the further growth of shipping and sail along with the theme of WMD, “Indispensable Shipping”

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ClassNK alters its rules for building box ships.

On 17^th June 2013 a 8,110 TEU ‘MOL Comfort’ container vessel, built in 2008 by MHI Nagasaki Shipyard split into two halves while on transit from Singapore to Jeddah (Saudi Arabia). All 26 crew, consisting of 11 Russians, 1 Ukrainian and 14 Filipinos, escaped the sinking ship on two life rafts and a lifeboat. The stern section containing approximately 1,500tonnes of fuel oil sank on 27^th June and the fore part which was being towed by a salvage company sank on 11 July 2013 having been partly destroyed by fire.

ClassNK established the Investigative Panel on Large Container Ship Safety, comprising of experts from shipbuilders, shipowners and academic institutions, to investigate the possibility of casualty occurrence and consider and examine safety of the large containership’s structure.

Nippon Kaiji Kyokai, known as ClassNK or NK, is a ship classification society. The principal work of the Society's expert technical staff is to undertake surveys to ensure that the rules that it has developed are applied to new buildings and existing ships to ensure the safety of vessels. Although based in Japan, where it has 22 offices, ClassNK also has worldwide representation through a network of 69 exclusive surveyor offices in 39 countries.

The Society offers a wide range of technical services, including the supervision of shipbuilding, computer analysis and a variety of inspections of industrial plants and equipment as a third-party inspection body or as an agent for purchasers or governments.

Japanese classification society ClassNK has amended its rules and guidance for building box ships, which will apply to vessels contracted for construction on or after 1^st April 2016. The move was triggered after the sinking of the box ship MOL Comfort. The amendments reflect new requirements from the International Associations of Classification Societies (applicable to ships built on or after July 2016), and recommendations from Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism committee of large container ship safety.

The Class society said the amendments proposed to demonstrate its commitment to building even safer ships. As a fall out of the above, IMO has come out with a new regulation under SOLAS chapter VI regulation II pertaining to cargo information by which it is mandatory for the shipper to certify the correct gross mass (weight) of the container and it will come into effect as of the 1^st of July 2016.

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