Factory Shutdown May Result in Chinese Port Bottleneck - The Chinese government plans to shutdown polluting factories for nine weeks (July 17th - Sept. 20th) within a 200 kilometer radius of Beijing to clear the smog for the 2008 Olympics and Paralympics. The area includes Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia and Shandong provinces. There could also be a shut down of material transportation and power plants to clear the air.

Hyundai Steamship Line Announces New Panama Canal Transit Fees Effective May 1, 2008 as follows:
$260 per container
$14   per weight ton
$6     per cubic meter

French ports face 36-hour rail strike on March 11 – JOC - A scheduled strike by rail workers in France is expected to seriously disrupt the movement of ocean containers to and from the country's leading container ports of Le Havre and Marseilles.
 
Genoa, Italy Port Workers held a one day strike March 5th, which may cause some delays.

Possible Delays in Canada - Another blast of winter and a CN freight train derailment in Brampton caused commuter chaos this morning. CN has recently suffered from a rash of unusual weather events across their network in Canada. Therefore cargo via Vancouver may experience delays.

ATA asks FMC to strike down SoCal truck plan agreement – American Shipper - An arm of the American Trucking Association has asked the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission to block a key component of the Long Beach and Los Angeles ports’ attempt to overhaul the Southern California drayage system. The filing charges the two adjacent ports with implementing an “unlawful ‘concession’ mechanism” and requests that the federal agency block a two-week-old administration agreement between the two ports that the ATA claims will make the ports’ terminal operators “day-to-day enforcers” of the ports’ truck plans.

Falling dollar being felt throughout Asia – American Shipper - The falling dollar is putting pressure on all of Asia's export-centric economies. A story in the China Daily Friday chronicled how thin the ice is upon which textile and apparel exporters skate. A 1 percent appreciation in China's currency results in a loss of 2 percent in profit margin in the labor-intensive textile industry, the newspaper said. It's a similar situation throughout Asia, with Thai and Indian currencies also rising steeply against the dollar and putting the pressure on low-margin exporters. Only Vietnam, which continues to peg its currency to the dollar, has been immune.

Our summary articles are compiled from a number of public sources that, to the best of Phoenix’s knowledge, are true and correct. In the event any information provided is erroneous, Phoenix International Freight Services, Ltd. accepts no liability or responsibility.