China Ocean Shipping (Group) Co (COSCO) has been shortlisted as a potential buyer to acquire a majority stake in Piraeus Port Authority, the largest port in Greece. The state-owned company will compete with four other companies, according to the Greek privatization agency Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (HRADF). COSCO is expected to submit its investment proposal after Athens decides what steps it wants to follow in the privatization of Piraeus and Thessaloniki. Piraeus Port is one of the largest seaports in the Mediterranean Sea basin and among the top 10 container ports in Europe. It has more than 1,500 employees and provides various services to more than 24,000 ships every year. COSCO faces stiff competition from APM Terminals and Ports America, Utilico Emerging Markets and International Container Terminal Services. Binding offers for the port are expected to be submitted by the bidders by the end of the year. Chen Yingming, Executive Vice President of the China Ports and Harbors Association, said that the shipping industry would continue to face tough times due to the stiff competition among international shipping giants. Strategies like forming alliances and offering lower shipping rates will affect the profitability of the sector in the long run, he said. COSCO Pacific, a subsidiary of COSCO Group, the fifth-largest container terminal operator in the world, has already made a substantial investment in Piraeus port. It spent €4.3 billion on a 35-year management lease for the No 2 and No 3 piers, which it has been operating since June 2010. The Chinese company invested an extra €230 million in 2013 to enhance the port’s cargo handling capacity over the next seven years, including building a new pier and almost tripling the volume of cargo that the port can handle. To help its port business in Greece, COSCO has started freight shipments for Hewlett-Packard and Huawei Technologies from its terminal in Piraeus port to destinations in the Czech Republic and Hungary, the China Daily reports.

Qingdao Port International Co’s shares dropped 1.3% to HKD3.71 in their trading debut on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, compared with their IPO price of HKD3.76, amid concern the company could be hurt by a probe into metal financing at the world’s seventh-busiest port. Net proceeds from the global offering were around HKD2.49 billion. According to its prospectus, 90% of the funds raised, or HKD2.24 billion, would be used for setting up cargo handling facilities at the Dongjiakou Port Area, a part of Qingdao Port that will be able to handle 300 million metric tons of cargo every year after completion. The lukewarm response from retail investors in Hong Kong also contributed to the share price decline. Only 11.89 million shares were grabbed in the local offering, equivalent to approximately 15% of the total amount available for subscription. The rest was purchased by international buyers, the company said in an announcement. A total of 776.38 million shares were on offer initially.

Chinese courts have heard an increasing number of commercial marine cases in the past three years, especially disputes involving foreign entities, according to an official with China’s top court. Disputes over marine cargo, ship rentals, vessel collisions and ship construction have risen, according to Luo Dongchuan, Chief Judge of the Maritime Department at the Supreme People’s Court (SPC). In 2011, Chinese maritime courts handled 8,692 cases. The figure rose to 11,224 last year. Of the 30,723 cases handled in the past three years by the 10 maritime courts, mostly located in coastal cities including Qingdao in Shandong province and Xiamen in Fujian province, 4,454 cases involved foreign litigants. Foreign-related marine cases heard by Chinese courts have involved 73 countries and regions, including Japan, the United States and Britain. Guo Ping, Professor specializing in marine cases at Dalian Maritime University in Liaoning province, said the increasing number of foreign cases is a good opportunity for Chinese maritime courts to establish judicial credibility. He Lixin, Professor of Marine Law at Xiamen University, said the high proportion of foreign-related cases also indicated that some foreign litigants have accepted Chinese trials as fair and just. China detained more than 6,000 ships, including 800 foreign vessels, from 2000 to 2013, the Supreme People’s Court said. Xu Guangyu, a senior lawyer specializing in marine cases, said some foreign companies have started asking Chinese lawyers to handle their disputes after vessels are detained, which means Chinese legal credibility has improved. “But the number of lawyers or judicial staff who are able to deal with maritime disputes is still small,” Xu said. Confusion about the application of foreign laws and delays in tracking judicial documents are among the major challenges facing Chinese maritime courts over international marine disputes. Sometimes cases can drag on for years, the China Daily reports.

The Chinese government announced it was blocking a proposed tie-up among global shipping firms on competition concerns. Denmark’s AP Moeller-Maersk, France’s CMA CGM and the Swiss MSC Mediterranean Shipping Co – the world’s three biggest ocean carriers – unveiled plans for their so-called P3 Network in June last year. The aim was to use a combined fleet to cut costs on Asia-Europe, trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific routes. But China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said in a statement that it had decided to prohibit the alliance after conducting an anti-trust assessment. The Ministry said the alliance, had it gone ahead, would “have a far-reaching impact on the global shipping industry and cause a high level of concern in all sectors.” It added that the alliance would increase the parties’ “combined capacity in container shipping on Asia-Europe routes” and give them a “substantial increase in market concentration.” In response to China’s decision, the companies said they were giving up the plan. The alliance had already been approved by regulators in Europe and the U.S. and would have enabled the participants to reduce costs and carbon emissions. China’s decision sent AP Moeller-Maersk shares tumbling the most in two years. “The decision does come as a surprise to us,” Maersk Chief Executive Nils Smedegaard Andersen said in a statement from the Copenhagen-based company. “The partners have worked hard to address all the regulators’ concerns.” Container lines have been battling overcapacity after a boom in ship orders collided with the global financial crisis, triggering the worst slump in prices for the carriage of cargo since containerization became global in the 1970s. The companies had planned to commit 255 vessels deployed on 29 trade loops to a joint center that would have run a combined fleet independently. Maersk, which transports about 15% of all the world’s containers, was slated to contribute 42% of the total, including its Triple-E class largest-ever container ships with a capacity of 18,000 boxes. The three companies have a combined 46.7% market share.

It was the first time China had blocked a proposed alliance involving solely foreign entities. “The main purpose is to protect the overseas development of domestic shipping companies,” said Jiang Yuechun, Director of the Department for World Economy and Development Studies at the China Institute of International Studies. Mario Mariniello, Economist at the Brussels based think tank Bruegel and a specialist in competition policy and regulation issues, said China has so far taken an overwhelmingly supportive stance as over a five-year period Beijing cleared 97% of mergers it reviewed, while most of the rest were approved with conditions. Just a single merger – between Coca-Cola and Chinese beverage maker Huiyuan – was blocked in 2009.

Beijing’s veto is good for the logistics industry as it preserves competition among container carriers, according to Klaus-Michael Kuehne, the German billionaire who owns the world’s largest sea-freight forwarder. “The infinite wisdom of the Chinese has helped to ensure that competition between the leading shipping companies will continue to exist,” Kuehne said. “From the point of view of the logistics industry and our trade and industry customers, this is good news in every respect.” Kuehne is the majority owner of Swiss-based Kuehne & Nagel International and also owns 28.2% of Germany’s biggest container line, Hapag-Lloyd. Kuehne & Nagel has closed 40 locations at its contract-logistics unit and is trying to turn around its overland business as cost cuts helped profit to climb 12% to CHF150 million in the first three months of the year. Hapag-Lloyd’s first-quarter loss widened as the takeover of Chilean rival Cia Sud Americana de Vapores (CSAV) drove up costs and freight rates remained under pressure.

China will soon publish its first guide to Arctic sailing on the Northern Sea Route, a newly discovered shortcut that will help Chinese shipping companies reduce transit times between China and Europe. The guide will offer “comprehensive, practical and authoritative” information for Chinese cargo ships for sailing the Northern Sea Route, or Northeast Passage, to Europe, Zhai Jiugang, Deputy Director of the Ministry of Transport’s Maritime Safety Administration, said at a news conference in Beijing. He said the guide will be released in July. The new route can save Chinese cargo ships 5,186 kilometers and nine days from the traditional voyage to Europe, which goes through the Malacca Straits and the Suez Canal, he said. The Northern Sea Route is a shipping lane officially defined by Russian legislation to run from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, along the Russian Arctic coast from Murmansk on the Barents Sea, along Siberia, to the Bering Strait and the Far East. The guide elaborates on such things as the Northern Sea Route’s nautical chart, sailing methods, ice-breaking providers and Arctic geography and climate, as well as laws and regulations of countries along the route, according to Wang Liangyu, Maritime Mapping Expert with the Ministry’s Donghai Navigation Safety Administration. The book’s publication will make China the second country after Russia to issue an Arctic voyage guide. There are three main shipping passages across the Arctic region, and the Northern Sea Route opens at the end of July for about four months. It is deemed the most economical route in the region because it has the shortest distance of 5,437 km but it was long marginalized because of ice blockage. With the effects of global warming, the route has become more accessible for ships because the ice is melting faster. A total of 46 commercial ships went through the lane last year, the China Daily reports.