Jim Wilson

Mitsui OSK Lines has announced its participation in a project to to develop and lease industrial real estate in Australia through an investment in a fund established and managed by Hankyu Hanshin Properties Australia Pty Ltd, an Australian subsidiary of Hankyu Hanshin Properties Corp. MOL will acquire interests in 11 logistics projects consisting of four...

By the International Maritime Organization The International Maritime Organization (IMO) is inviting applications for technical assistance for pilot projects, specifically for the development of feasibility studies to support the deployment of zero- or near-zero GHG emission solutions on board ships and in ports. This technical assistance, provided through the GreenVoyage2050 programme, offers eligible developing countries a unique opportunity for tailor-made assistance for feasibility studies up...

Super Typhoon Yagi is disrupting shipping around east Asia, south east Asia, trade media are reporting. The violent weather system is bearing down on the Chinese coast at the island of Hainan, a short distance from the metropolitan areas of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong. The system will create at least some temporary disruption because...

Freight rates & demand Freight rates as recorded by the Drewry World Container Index have dropped by 8 per cent to USD$4,775 per forty foot container this week. That’s the composite index rate and, as ever, rates differ by trade. Rates from Shanghai to Rotterdam “plunged” by 14% – that’s a fall of just under...

Captain Melwyn Noronha, the CEO of Shipping Australia, recently gave evidence to the Federal Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCOT)  a Senate-House joint Committee. The Committee was taking evidence from witnesses on the so-called “High Seas Treaty,” which is new international law aimed at preserving bio-diversity in the high seas beyond the jurisdiction limits of...

Shipping Australia recently made a large policy submission to the Australia’s Climate Change Authority as to how shipping will meet its climate change goals. We argued that it is good policy for Australia to ensure that marine atmospheric environmental regulation and policy is governed at the international regulatory level. Shipping Australia is pleased to see...

Health and port authorities around the world are beginning to introduce new rules – mostly notification rules at this point – to control the ongoing spread of Mpox. Much of the current crackdown appears to have been triggered by the World Health Organization’s declaration of Mpox as a public health emergency of international concern in...

Port State Controllers around the world will launch a “Concentrated Inspection Campaign (CIC) on Crew Wages and Seafarers’ Employment Agreements,” this weekend (Sunday 01 September 2024). The purpose of the campaign is to raise awareness of crew wages and seafarer employment agreements and to verify that ships are compliant. The inspection campaign runs from 01...

Shipping Australia CEO, Capt. Melwyn Noronha sets out how Shipping Australia sees how a wide variety of issues. These include rising protectionism, Australian protectionism, the maritime economy, the geopolitical disaster that is the Red Sea, Australian trade, the MASS Code, biofouling, port performance, Marine Order 32, and more. Read the opinion piece here. 

Shipping Australia was dismayed when Federal Workforce Minister, the Hon Minister Tony Burke MP, basically dismissed or disregarded a viciously expensive industrial action. It ran from at least October 2023 to February 2024 when an agreement was eventually reached. Shipping Australia had repeatedly written to the Minister urging him to use his powers under the...