Lloyd’s Register, Maersk and the ports of Felixstowe and Charleston will examine the regulatory, security and operational framework needed to support future nuclear-powered containership operations, looking beyond reactor technology to real-world deployment

The Baltic Exchange will stick to the status quo on Middle East Gulf freight benchmarks for the time being, after long-awaited consultation feedback highlighted concerns with its proposed changes

Deputy editor Linton Nightingale launches the 2026 edition of the Top 100 Container Ports, and explains how the hierarchy of key ports is beginning to change

The world’s largest container ports were expected to show slower development in 2025 as tariffs, trade tensions and weaker economic growth threatened to derail demand. Instead, the rankings reveal an industry that continues to adapt and expand, with Asia cementing its dominance, emerging transhipment hubs gaining market share and global supply chains becoming more fragmented, regionalised and resilient

Twenty-five years of globalisation, consolidation and disruption have reshaped the world’s container port hierarchy. As cargo flows shifted east, transhipment hubs thrived and successive shocks exposed supply chain vulnerabilities, the winners and losers of maritime trade emerged in increasingly stark relief

The Red Sea and Hormuz crises have forced carriers, ports and cargo owners to rethink long-held assumptions about trade routes and network design. While the disruptions exposed critical vulnerabilities across global supply chains, they also revealed an industry increasingly adept at adapting to geopolitical shocks, raising new questions about resilience, infrastructure investment and the future shape of port networks

Higher throughput and a one-off provision reversal lifted first-half profit, but geopolitical disruption weighed on overseas terminal operations

In 2023, after the pandemic boom ended, there were dire predictions on the fate of container shipping lines. These forecasts turned out to be spectacularly wrong. Three years later, liner operators are still going strong

South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal has ruled that associated ship arrests can be supported by credible circumstantial evidence of common control, affirming the evidential value of Lloyd’s List Intelligence data in a decision likely to strengthen the hands of creditors

A tanker flagged with the Isle of Man registry has found itself in the unlikely centre of a row between Argentina’s federal government and the local government of Tierra del Fuego over who should oversee the critical port of Ushuaia

Container volumes, carrier deployment and customs data suggest efforts to diversify supply chains are reshaping Chinese trade rather than reducing it, as exports expand across Asia, the US and a growing range of higher-value industries