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Africa's slow but steady progress in containerisation continues despite its lack of navigable river access
Africa's lack of substantial rivers of sufficient width and depth - aside from the Congo and the Nile - have deprived the continent in benefiting from the efficiencies of containerisation that have reduced the cost of shipping goods elsewhere in the world.
As late as the 1970s half of the retail price of most import consumables went to shipping getting them into the hands of consumers. General cargo ships were much smaller than they are today, and could ship less as a result, which restricted sales of imports to the more affluent,
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Reviving the use and utility of the transatlantic Great Circle Route, and rethinking the St Lawrence Seaway
When Montreal was the busiest seaport in North America outside New York, despite being 1,000 miles from the sea, it was dependent on the value the Great Circle Route that enabled ships from Western Europe to plunge into the heartland of consumer-rich North America.
Of course, that's not been true for 40 years, largely because of the increase in ship size, after which Montreal's 35-foot deep navigation channel was not nearly enough to accommodate ships that required 50-feet. Not only alongside, but throughout that 1,000 miles from the sea.
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Fighting back: Is it not time to question questionable claims that require shipping to bow to eco- alarmists?
Bjorn Lomborg, the famous Danish skeptical environmentalist, whose reasoning on global warming seems reasonable, is denied the slightest hearing, much less serious consideration, at high-level scientific and inter-governmental conferences.
Given the issue's importance to shipping and Mr Lomborg's attachment to rationality, it is surprising lobbies such as the World Shipping Council, BIMCO, Intertanko and the like, do not defend themselves and their industries by deploying his sound arguments.
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China-EU rail freight grows - will it be game changer many hope or sink in a sea of unsustainable subsidies?
Rail freight between China and the European Union has experienced 100-fold increase since the beginning of the 2010s. From 2011 when the first, there have been 6,637 freight trains in both directions when in 2017 there were a record 3,673 trips. This, according to Warsaw's Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW Osrodek Studiow Wschodnich), a state-sponsored think tank which did an exhaustive study on the development.
While the Eurasian Land Bridge was completed in 1990, when the railway systems of China and Kazakhstan linked up at Alataw Pass, it was only in October 2008 when the first "Trans-Eurasia Logistics" train reached Hamburg from Xiangtan travelling along the entire northern route. In July 2011, the line was first used as a regular freight route between Chongqing and Duisburg, Germany.
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