Dealing with the shameful crew-change crisis

Posted on September 14, 2020 by | Leave a comment

Here’s a suggestion for a relatively simple way to stop the cheating on crew changes during Covid-19.

Crews are often not allowed to leave ships during the Covid-19 crisis, and are either coerced into signing renewal contracts or simply denied the ability to travel home. How to stop it?

The proposal: get P&I insurers to deny coverage until crew members have been changed. It’s clearly a safety issue to have continuously-serving crew who do not get a mandated break.

It’s simple, and doesn’t require a lot of collaboration between countries, shipowners, and international agencies. And enforcement is quick and easy and dire for the shipowners and cargo owners. No one will ship with a carrier who does not have P&I insurance.

I thin it has real promise, and only needs a few P&I executives to make it happen.

Andrew Craig-Bennett September 14, 2020

Link: https://splash247.com/a-practical-way-to-deal-with-the-shameful-maltreatment-of-600000-people/

Previous story: https://mymaritimeblog.wordpress.com/2020/09/10/flag-states-attacked-for-weakness-on-crew-change/

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Heartland shippers feel 20-foot box squeeze

Posted on September 14, 2020 by | Leave a comment

Twenty-foot containers are better than 40-foot containers for many ag products, and for machinery. Neither of these completely fills a container, and the smaller size means less blocking. But the containers are in short supply in the Midwest.

Twenty-foot containers are also ideal for products like soybeans, which have considerable Midwest-to-Asia container trade. They are a better size for shipments, because they are a bit smaller. We can’t always get a full forty-foot container because of the order size, which for premium products tends to be smaller. High-quality non-GMO beans often are not grown in the large bulk quantities.

Fewer products are shipped to the Midwest in 20-foot containers. And apparently, many of the 20-footers from the Far East are simply reused in California and Washington, rather than moving east. Goods could even be transshipped there to 53-footers for the ride into the Midwest. There’s no shortage on the West Coast.

This kind of problem is what plagues logistics operators of all kinds, as well as shippers. A simple little issue, very hard to do anything about. How do we cope with it?

By Chris Gillis Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Link: https://www.freightwaves.com/news/heartland-shippers-feel-20-foot-box-squeeze

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ExxonMobil to expand biofuel bunkering

Posted on September 13, 2020 by | 1 comment

ExxonMobil is working with the Port of Rotterdam and Stena Bulk to provide 0.5% marine biofuel made with second-generation waste. It will be available later this year.

This renewable fuel on a commercial scale is a noble effort. It won’t be a large part of the world requirement, but it shows the concept can be workable in a major setting. Apparently the shipboard trial was quite successful; hence this news report.

September 10, 2020 | Meghan Sapp

Link: https://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2020/09/10/exxonmobil-to-expand-biofuel-bunkering-after-successful-trial/

Here’s the press release: https://www.exxonmobil.com/en/marine/technicalresource/press-releases/marine-bio-fuel-oil

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