FASA

Caribbean and Central American ocean carrier and terminal operator King Ocean has signed a 20-year lease extension at the South Florida port that calls for a minimum 72,000 container lifts per year over an initial 10-year term.

The United States Coast Guard is scheduled to meet with the Federal Maritime Commission on Feb. 18 to hear shipper concerns about the new verified gross mass requirement enacted by the International Maritime Organization.

A new position paper from the Agriculture Transport Coalition lays out options such as delaying enforcement of the SOLAS verified gross mass requirement or allowing weight variance, and requests a congressional inquiry into the IMO.

Maritime industry groups are concerned that the 2017 fiscal year budget request from the Obama administration will hurt progress made by ports on infrastructure and the environment.

Container carriers have offered to publish binding actual rates a month before they go into effect, according to a recent report from Reuters news service.

Ports covered by the Global Port Tracker report are expected to handle 8.8 million TEUs throughout the first half of 2016, a 4.5 percent increase from the corresponding period in 2015, according to the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates.

In container volumes alone, the German port experienced a 9.3 percent year-over-year decline to 8.8 million TEUs, which primarily resulted from lower volumes handled to and from China, Russia and Poland.

Third-party logistics services provider Roadrunner Transportation Systems has expanded its less-than-truckload presence in Texas with new offices in Dallas and Houston, and has taken over another facility in Memphis, Tenn.