Category: Sea

The ocean freight trade-lane between Europe and the United States is dominated by a handful of large carriers and while we have good relationships and work closely with those carriers, we also maintain a roster of smaller carriers, for tactical use, including one which has a particular pedigree. ... Read more

As freight prices on every mode return to relative stability and the worst effects of inflation work though, the market is expected to rebalance, achieve ‘correction’ and ultimately recover with slow growth in 2023. The spiking freight rates on all modes are falling away and... Read more

In just over two weeks, IMO 2023 will require containers ships to comply with new environmental efficiency and carbon intensity regulations, which older ships will have difficulty complying with and may prompt early scrapping, removing vast swathes of capacity from the market. According t... Read more

Just weeks after the Electronic Trade Documents Bill was presented before Parliament, Metro has commenced its first trial shipment with an electronic bill of lading (eBL), on Hapag Lloyd, which was a first for the German carrier too. Following large-scale frauds and disruption to global trade ... Read more

Roll-on/roll-off (RoRo) ships are designed to carry wheeled cargo, such as cars, trucks, buses, railroad cars, excavators and industrial vehicles and in this niche sector freight rates are increasing, with some routes fully booked four months out, which means if you have a wheeled cargo to move, ... Read more

The decarbonisation of global shipping is currently the subject of regulatory intervention: at the international level, with the International Maritime Organisation’s ( IMO’s) 2023 rules, designed to further reduce emissions from vessels; and at the regional level, with the EU’s Emissions T... Read more

Operating a fleet of 17 pure car and truck carriers, United European Car Carriers (UECC) is the leading RoRo provider of short sea services for cars and other rolling cargo. Leading customer, Metro, was invited to Zeeburgge, to witness the naming of the world’s 1st hybrid pure car and truck car... Read more

The latest, market leading source, Sea-Intelligence schedule reliability figures show a slight decline of 0.7% in September to 45.5%, which is the first fall since reliability began to trend upwards in April and follows the year’s largest reliability increase of 5.8% in August. The average d... Read more

Metro has been shipping freight to, from and across Europe since 1981, using road, rail and short-sea services to create country and product-specific transport solutions. Our new Head of European Services, Matt Paxton-Rhodes, wants to make these award-winning solutions available to more shippers,... Read more

Dock worker strikes at Felixstowe and Liverpool, which overlapped for seven days, ended this week still without agreement and the likelihood of further disruption appears inevitable, with Liverpool members of the Unite Union preparing to stage a second walkout, from the 11th to 17th of October. ... Read more

While we continue to drive forward our ‘green’ initiatives, by selecting environmentally focused partners and further developing our MVT ECO platform in managing, measuring and offsetting carbon emissions, we also monitor ‘green’ developments that may impact our sector. The Hydrofoil a... Read more

For much of the last two years, container shipping lines have struggled to maintain sufficient capacity to meet demand, but in recent months demand has fallen away, which means that some vessels are not fully utilised, with carriers blanking more sailings and reducing supply u... Read more