China will continue Greek investments despite pushback

Significance Unionised workers have staged several industrial actions against the port’s Chinese owners, the China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO). The recent death of an employee has raised again concerns about working conditions. There are concerns more widely about the Chinese giant’s impact on the local business and marine environments, and whether it honours its agreements. Impacts The current centre-right government will have less cordial relations with China than its left-wing predecessor. Amid its disputes with COSCO over its investment agreement, Athens will strive to portray Greece as a safe place for foreign investors. COSCO will endeavour to improve its image locally by proclaiming environmental initiatives and supporting charities.

Verification Simulation and Development of New Marine Transport Model

The structure of the global supply chain creates an imbalance in trade between regions of the world. It creates many empty containers on the ocean shipping route. Focusing on this problem, we will develop an empty container relocation plan for empty containers in a marine container logistics network connecting multiple bases and propose a model that minimizes the total cost of container transportation. The proposed model was verified by the simulation designed and developed in this study, and the effectiveness of the proposed model was shown by the data of the marine transportation company.

At the far end of oceanic seaways: St. Petersburg shipping in the eighteenth century

Since the late sixteenth century, parallel with the growth of West-European ocean shipping, seaborne connections between the North and Baltic seas increased constantly. The rising maritime powers, the Dutch Republic and Great Britain, carried to the Baltic colonial and manufacturing produce in exchange for grain and raw materials, thus connecting the area with their oceanic trades. These commodity flows are amply illuminated by the Sound Toll records. In contrast, evidence of intra-Baltic shipping is fragmentary and imperfect, with many gaps. Such an imbalance of sources implies a drawback: we do not know how dominant the West-European connections actually were in Baltic shipping. Fortunately, there are a few primary records that shed light on intra-Baltic shipping, notably the ship-lists of the port of Cronstadt published by the Russian and German-language journal Sankt Peterburgskije Vedomosti/St. Petersburgische Zeitung from 1744. The port of Cronstadt is particularly interesting as it constitutes the extreme eastern terminus of sea routes from the wider world. No comprehensive data from these ship-lists have hitherto been published. Utilising them, this article analyses the main trends in the development of St. Petersburg's shipping connections within the Baltic Sea as well as with the regions beyond the Danish Sound.

Flexible Optimization of International Shipping Routes considering Carbon Emission Cost

Carbon emissions cost is a potential effective measure to restrict hydrocarbon pollution in the international shipping trade. The minimization of the total cost is pursued by ship operators, whereas voyage cost is increasingly involving the replacement of clean fuel and changing the cost of the shipping route. A flexible optimization method focusing on maximizing the total profit is developed in terms of sailing speed optimization and single port skips integrate carbon emission influence. An actual ocean shipping route from Shanghai to Rotterdam is applied to validate the effectiveness of the proposed models. The results have shown that the shipping route profit is volatile along with the sailing speed and the number of port calls. However, the profit will be maximized when applying the single port skip and will slow down the sailing speed at the same time. The demand of planned skip port can be supported by a short line container. A system composed of ocean container liner and short line container can improve the profit by 4.05% and reduce the carbon emission by 19.70%. Furthermore, sensitive results show that the profit is less affected by the changing of the carbon emission cost. A small size container has enough ability to solve the short transportation demand in adjacent ports and convert extraberthing cost into profit. These findings can provide reliable support for the shipping route decision process considering future carbon emission costs.