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Corona Virus Outbreak Had Hit Hard To The Italian Owners Who Seeks 18-Month Standstill Agreements With Banks Italy’s death toll surpassed China’s on Thursday and the national lockdown will have to be extended beyond the current end-date of April 3, as per PM of Italy. Under the lockdown rules, people can only leave their homes to get food or medicines, or to perform other essential services or to go to work. The Italian ship owners’ association, Confitarma, presented this week a long list of requests to the national government and the transport ministry dedicated to the shipping companies thus making it possible for them to overcome the emergency. Among them there are measures aimed at reducing the cost of calls for roro ships deployed on the so-called motorways of the seas in Italy and also for the terminal operators.  Confitarma also would like to see bankruptcy and restructuring procedures suspended, asking also for some kind of standstill agreement for 18 months on all the financial exposures with the banks . Oman Merges Its Main Shipping Line And Shipyard ASYAD Group has decided to merge Oman Shipping Company (OSC) and Oman Drydock Company (ODC). These actions follow similar steps executed previously by the group, such as the consolidation of Oman National Transport Company and the National Ferries Company (NFC) to standardize and unify public transport services. Additionally, ASYAD merged Duqm Development Company (DDC) into Oman Drydock Company (ODC). ASYAD is Oman’s state-backed integrated logistics provider in control of 16 entities and with an ambitious goal to make the country one of the world’s top 10 logistics hubs. Hyundai Merchant Marine To Rebrand As HMM Co. Ltd. South Korean flagship mainline operator Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM) will be renamed HMM Co., Ltd., to reflect the company’s new corporate identity, as the Hyundai group is no longer HMM’s largest shareholder after swapping debt for equity with the company’s banks. As of 30 September 2019, HMM’s largest shareholders are Korea Development Bank and Korea Ocean Business Corporation, which have stakes of 12.94% and 4.38%, respectively. HMM took its first steps towards its new identity in 2018, when the “Hyundai” livery on its containers was replaced with “HMM”. Name cards of HMM’s staff were also relabeled with the HMM name. In May 2019, the process to rebrand HMM was expedited when a mission to create a new corporate identity was announced. The HMM name is unlikely to be unfamiliar to the market, since the company has been often referred to by its acronym. Global Supply Chains Up For Review According to the latest analysis from BIMCO, we can expect to see a slowing down of globalization alongside a review of global supply chains, once the dust start settling Covid-19 outbreak. The crisis has already exposed several vulnerabilities to the supply chains in the global market. BIMCO does not expect a demand boost to appear when daily lives return. It will merely see a gradual recovery to normal freight volumes. For the regular network logistics, BIMCO expects 2020 to be massively disrupted due to these out-of-sync impacts to export centres and import centres across the globe. American And European Ports Suffer Record Low Container Equipment Availability The massive box imbalance brought about by the trade war and then the coronavirus sees Chinese ports rammed full of boxes waiting to move, while carriers are urgently deploying extra tonnage to other hubs where equipment shortages are now at their lowest levels ever. Container availability at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles in the US, and at Hamburg, Rotterdam and Antwerp are now at their lowest levels recorded. Despite carriers sending more ships to move boxes to their required destinations in recent days, the equipment shortage is expected to worsen. To help fix the situation in Califorina, MSC is redeploying the 23,756 teu MSC Mia , which currently holds the joint record as the world’s largest container vessel, as well as the 23,656 teu MSC Nela from the Asia-Europe trades onto the transpacific in services it operates with Maersk as part of the pair’s 2M vessel sharing agreement. Sources: https://splash247.com/liners-warned-to-brace-for-17m-teu-drop-in-volumes-this-year/ https://splash247.com/pil-offloads-pacific-direct-line-to-neptune-pacific-line/ http://www.maritimegateway.com/new-inland-container-depot-madurai-aid-trade-tamil-nadu-hinterlands/ https://www.porttechnology.org/news/oakland-becomes-latest-us-port-to-suffer-import-crash/