Recent Posts
Every Active Chokepoint in Global Shipping, Ranked by Daily Transit Volume
A chokepoint is a stretch of water narrow enough that closing it forces a detour long enough to change the economics of a trade. That definition excludes a lot of famous straits and includes a few obscure ones. Ranked below by throughput, with the reroute cost that gives each one its leverage.
Volumes are approximate and stated on a normal-year basis. Several of these have not had a normal year since 2023, which is noted where it applies.
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Why a TEU Is Not a Container, and Why the Distinction Moves Numbers
A port announces it handled ten million TEU last year. The natural reading is that ten million boxes crossed the quay. They didn’t. The real number was probably closer to six million, and depending on the port, a large share of those boxes never entered the country at all.
TEU stands for twenty-foot equivalent unit. It is a normalising unit, invented so that ports and carriers with mixed box lengths could compare capacity on one scale.
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Is Hormuz Lost for Container Traffic? Jebel Ali's Collapse and the Gulf of Oman Rebuild
The honest answer is that container traffic is further gone than tanker traffic, and for reasons that have almost nothing to do with how the war ends. Crude can move on a shadow fleet with the transponders off. A 19,000 TEU boxship on a fixed weekly rotation cannot. What is being lost is not the waterway. It is Jebel Ali’s position as the default first port of call for the Middle East.
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Cruise Turnarounds and Container Terminals in One Basin: The Costs Ports Absorb Quietly
A cruise ship at a commercial berth looks like a nice piece of civic branding. Passengers on deck, cranes in the background, the whole port working at once. What the picture does not show is that for the length of that call, a container terminal has been operating with one hand tied behind its back.
Most mid-size ports that handle both passengers and boxes never built a separate cruise facility. The cruise business arrived later, or seasonally, or as a political initiative, and it got slotted into whatever quay had the depth and the road frontage.
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Maersk Air Cargo Joins BARIG to Push Back on German Air Freight Costs
Maersk Air Cargo has become the newest member of BARIG, the Board of Airline Representatives in Germany, as the trade association sharpens its focus on the country’s air cargo sector.
BARIG has been pressing German authorities to address what it describes as excessive location costs and layers of bureaucratic complexity weighing on airfreight operators. Chairman Michael Hoppe pointed to airfreight’s growing importance for German industrial supply chains, arguing that current conditions put unnecessary strain on operators at a time when the mode is more critical than ever.
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Why Many Livestock Carriers Started Life as Car Carriers
Walk along almost any port that handles livestock exports and you’ll notice something odd: the ships look a lot like car carriers. Tall, boxy hulls. High freeboard. Almost no portholes. A silhouette built for stacking, not for passengers.
That’s not a coincidence. A large share of the world’s livestock carrier fleet didn’t start out moving sheep and cattle at all — these vessels began life as Pure Car and Truck Carriers (PCTCs), the same ships used to ferry new vehicles across oceans.
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Uber to Acquire Delivery Hero in Landmark $14.8 Billion Deal
This landmark consolidation in the global food delivery space marks a major step in the competition between top platforms.
The Financial Details Offer Price: Uber has offered €41.50 per share in cash. This represents a premium of approximately 127% on the unaffected three-month volume-weighted average share price prior to May 8, 2026. Total Valuation: The voluntary takeover offer implies a fully diluted equity value of €13.0 billion (approximately $14.8 billion). Net Valuation: Adjusting for Uber’s previously acquired shares in Delivery Hero, the net value of the deal is $13.
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Strait of Hormuz Closure Drives Asia-US Container Spot Rates 276% Higher
The clearest price signal in the Iran war is not coming from crude. It is coming from box rates on a trade lane that runs nowhere near the Persian Gulf.
Spot rates from the Far East to the U.S. West Coast now sit 276% above where they were at the end of February, before the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran. East Coast rates are up 232% over the same window.
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U.S. Container Imports Jump 8.2% in June as Tariff and Iran War Front-Loading Hits Ports
U.S. container imports rose 8.2% year-over-year in June, according to supply chain technology provider Descartes Systems Group, as importers rushed goods into the country ahead of potential new tariffs and rising transportation costs linked to the war in Iran. U.S. seaports processed 2,400,627 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) during the month.
The headline number looks like strength, but the first-half data tells a different story. For the first six months of 2026, imports were actually down 0.
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Asia-Europe and Transpacific Freight Rates Surge Despite Capacity Recovery From Iran War Disruption
Container capacity on the two biggest East-West trade lanes has largely recovered from the disruption caused by the Iran war, yet spot rates are still running well above pre-crisis norms. That combination — normalized sailings alongside stubbornly elevated pricing — is the clearest sign that this year’s rate strength has shifted from a pure supply shock to a demand-and-surcharge story.
The Numbers Right Now On the transpacific, Shanghai to New York spot rates climbed 11% week-on-week to $7,902 per 40ft container, while Shanghai to Los Angeles rose 10% to $6,349.
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