Chiquita had been booking shipments of fresh fruit from Latin America on four of Eastwind’s reefer ships, but those vessels had been seized by Nordea Bank and are being operated by another company, said Ed Lloyd, a Chiquita spokesman. He declined to identify the company.
Chiquita in 2007 had sold the four ships and eight other vessels to an alliance between East wind and N YKLauritzenCool (now NYKCool) and leased them back, Lloyd said.
The four ships carry imported fresh fruit from Latin America to the ports of Wilmington, Del.; Port Everglades, Fla.; Gulfport, Miss.; and Freeport, Texas. NYKCool continues to operate the eight other ships in the Latin America-Europe trade.
Before the Chiquita agreement, Eastwind operated 105 ships — 68 of which it owned — including refrigerated fruit carriers, freezer vessels, bulk carriers, product tankers and container ships, according to Chiquita.
Eastwind’s June 24 Chapter 7 liquidation filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York listed $500 million to $1 billion in assets and liabilities. Related affiliates include Kura Shipping and Probulk.
The documents did not give a reason for the filing beyond saying, “In the judgment of the board of directors, it is desirable and in the best interests of the company, its
creditors and other interested parties that the company file a petition for relief and commence a case under the provisions of Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code.”
Eastwind also faces a $23 million lawsuit from PB Tankers over defaulted payments and attempted cancellation of time-char-ter agreements, a $6 million lawsuit from Medal Shipping, and two smaller lawsuits from bunker suppliers over unpaid bills. It also has had two of its vessels arrested.
Salvatore LaMonica, a bankruptcy attorney with LaMonica Herbst & Manis-calco in Wantagh, N.Y., is handling Eastwind’s affairs, according to a notice on the company’s Web site.
Since last July, seven small, mostly intra-Asia carriers have gone out of business. Germany’s Senator Lines, majority-owned by South Korea’s Hanjin Shipping, was the best-known carrier to cease operations. Hanjin fulfilled its affiliate’s obligations after the February shutdown, so shippers weren’t left holding an empty bag.
Four other container operators, including China’s SYMS and South Africa’s SA Independent Liner Services, failed in late 2008. Singapore-based EP Carriers faces financial difficulties, and Bulgarian shipping company Navibulgar closed its Bulcon container arm. JOC
WHEN PRESIDENT BUSH sought support for the controversial Central America Free Trade Agreement a few years ago, Harding Stowe, chairman of RL Stowe Mills, hosted the president at his plant in Belmont, N.C.
The reason, Stowe said, was the Bush administration’s promise to strictly enforce trade preference rules in CAFTA. This January, RL Stowe Mills was forced to close because Customs failed to stem the tide of illegal imports of Pakistani and Chinese yarn falsely labeled “Made in the U. S.”
Worse, Stowe said his company supplied Customs with regular information about which other companies were using the illegal imports and where the yarns were coming from, but Customs failed to act. Stowe is hardly alone.
It sounds good on paper: CAFTA and other trade agreements open vast oppor-
THE CONTAINER SHIPPING industry is on pace to scrap a record 300,000 TEUs of capacity this year as carriers and shipowners race to curb supply in the face of plunging demand.
If reached, the 300,000 TEUs would be 10 times the historical average, according to Paris-based consultant AXS-Alphaliner.
Shipowners assigned 94 fully cellular containers ships totaling 184,700 TEUs for
scrapping in the first half of the year, nearly as much as the total amount scrapped in the past five years, Alphaliner said.
Ocean carriers have been taking the lead in demolishing surplus tonnage, accounting for 107,200 TEUs of capacity sold to ship breakers, while charter owners have scrapped 77,500 TEUs.
Scrapping likely will ease during the third-quarter peak shipping season. But
it will pick up in the final three months of the year as nearly 10 percent of the world container fleet is laid up.
Deliveries of new ships also will increase capacity as global box traffic slows.
Ocean carriers and charter ship owners are expected to at least maintain current scrapping rates into 2010, when the oversupply of box ship capacity is forecast to peak at around 3. 5 million TEUs. JOC
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