Break
Featured
Live updates
Updated 10:17
The wire
RSS-
Settled On-Chain: A Tanker Charter Paid in Stablecoins
A product tanker, a Dubai trading house and $1.14m in charter hire moved on Ethereum in about four minutes, at the end of a banking week. Here is why they did it, what it cost and what their banks said afterwards.
-
The Beach Where Ships Go to Die Is Getting a Dry Dock
For forty years ships at Alang were run onto the sand at high tide and cut apart where they stopped. One yard is pouring a concrete floor instead, and paying for it in steel.
-
The Gold Is Moving East, One Pallet at a Time
Large bars leave vaults in the West, get melted down in the Alps and fly on to Asia in armoured cargo holds. The route runs on one number: how much a gram costs in yuan.
-
Chokepoints: The Narrow Places That Carry a Third of Everything
Seven straits and canals, some narrower than a city, carry about a third of seaborne trade. A tour of the narrows, what closes them and what a detour really costs.
-
The Grain Corridor, Told by the People Who Load It
A foreman, a barge skipper, a surveyor and an insurance broker on one wheat cargo, from the elevator to the open sea. Listen to the episode, or read the story it tells.
-
The Factory That Works in the Dark
At ten each night the ceiling lights go off in Hall 3 and 46 robot cells keep machining. We filmed a night with the three people who watch them from across the yard.
-
Stacked to the Ceiling: What a Warehouse of Unsold Solar Panels Says About the Market
Aisle fourteen holds 61 megawatts of solar modules that nobody has cleared through customs. The pallets have been there since winter, and the price on them has fallen every month.
-
The Green Premium Belongs on the Bill of Lading
A pair of trainers shipped on clean fuel costs a few cents more to move. The brand that sells them has no idea, because the premium is buried in a surcharge nobody reads.
-
A Night Shift on the Quay: Forty Metres Up With the Crane Operators
A glass floor, two joysticks and a ship that will not wait. We spent a night in the cab of a ship-to-shore crane, where a good operator moves a container every two minutes until dawn.
-
The Battery Park Next to the Substation
Ninety-six containers of lithium cells, a chain-link fence and a trading desk that earns its money in five-minute slices. This episode goes inside a grid battery.
-
The Last Paper in Trade: Letters of Credit Go Digital
Every week, couriers fly originals of bills of lading across the world so a bank clerk in Hamburg can check them by hand. In this episode we sit with the checkers and watch the paper start to disappear.
-
White Gold, Blue Ponds: A Year at the Edge of a Lithium Brine Field
At 2,300 metres, a lithium producer pumps brine into ponds the colour of a hotel pool and waits eighteen months for the sun to finish. Its neighbours, its buyers and a faster rival process are not prepared to wait that long.
Today
All
The Customs Broker's New Colleague Reads Invoices Faster Than She Does
An Antwerp brokerage now lets software propose a tariff code for every invoice line. It clears a thousand lines before lunch. A person still signs, and the vendor's liability ends at a month's fee.
Live: Fog Closes the Elbe Approach, Forty Ships Wait at Anchor
Visibility at the mouth of the Elbe dropped below two hundred metres overnight. Pilots stopped boarding, the anchorage filled and one terminal rewrote its berth plan by the hour.
Live: Copper Jumps After a Landslide Cuts an Andean Mine Road
A landslide overnight has blocked the only road to the Cerro Alto copper mine. No one was hurt, but trucks are stuck, ore is piling up and the copper price is climbing. Follow the updates as they come.
Live: Dollar Slips as Asian Exporters Convert Their Receipts
Exporters in Seoul, Taipei and Tokyo sold dollars into a thin morning market. The euro and the yen are firmer, and shipping stocks with dollar revenue are among the first to feel it. Updates as they come.
Stop Calling It Deglobalisation
Goods have not stopped crossing borders. They have started crossing more of them.
No One on the Bridge
At three in the morning a fishing fleet turned across the bow of a ship with nobody on her bridge. The captain handling it was sitting in a former grain office in Rotterdam.
Shipping
21 stories
Live: Fog Closes the Elbe Approach, Forty Ships Wait at Anchor
Visibility at the mouth of the Elbe dropped below two hundred metres overnight. Pilots stopped boarding, the anchorage filled and one terminal rewrote its berth plan by the hour.
No One on the Bridge
At three in the morning a fishing fleet turned across the bow of a ship with nobody on her bridge. The captain handling it was sitting in a former grain office in Rotterdam.
The Manifest, Episode 40: Fog, Copper and the Crewless Ship
Why container rates keep falling, why smelters are paying miners to take their ore, and what happens on the night a feeder ship sails with nobody aboard.
The Ship That Runs on Its Own Cargo
Every LNG carrier arrives lighter than it left, and the missing gas is no accident. Inside the tank physics that turn a cargo into fuel, and the machines now winning some of it back.
Commodities
9 stories
Energy
12 stories-
4 min
The Ship That Runs on Its Own Cargo
Every LNG carrier arrives lighter than it left, and the missing gas is no accident. Inside the tank physics that turn a cargo into fuel, and the machines now winning some of it back.
-
3 min
Bitcoin Miners Are Buying the Gas Oil Fields Used to Burn
On a lease in West Texas, a flare that burned for three years went out last month. The gas now runs a generator, and the generator runs 320 mining machines in two shipping containers. The economics depend on one price.
-
3 min
First Ammonia Bunkering: Six Hours, One Hose, Nobody Smelled a Thing
A bunker tanker, a bulk carrier and 410 tonnes of the most toxic fuel shipping has tried. Our camera was on deck from the first mooring line to the last nitrogen purge.
-
3 min
Four Rotor Sails and a Headwind: A Week on a Wind-Assisted Bulk Carrier
Four spinning towers, a captain who plans his route around the trade winds, and a fuel log that is kinder on some days than others. We sailed with them for a week.
Money
9 stories
Live: Dollar Slips as Asian Exporters Convert Their Receipts
Exporters in Seoul, Taipei and Tokyo sold dollars into a thin morning market. The euro and the yen are firmer, and shipping stocks with dollar revenue are among the first to feel it. Updates as they come.
Why Your Freight Is Still Invoiced in Dollars
A pump maker in Duisburg sells in euros, pays its staff in euros and trucks its boxes to Rotterdam in euros. The bill for the ocean leg still comes in dollars, and nobody at the company ever chose that.
Bitcoin Miners Are Buying the Gas Oil Fields Used to Burn
On a lease in West Texas, a flare that burned for three years went out last month. The gas now runs a generator, and the generator runs 320 mining machines in two shipping containers. The economics depend on one price.
Yen at the Dock: What a Weak Currency Does to Japan's Shipowners
The family owners of the Seto Inland Sea earn their charter hire in dollars and pay their banks, yards and taxes in yen. When the yen weakens, the same ship earns more at home, and the order books start to fill.
Opinion
All OpinionGoods have not stopped crossing borders. They have started crossing more of them.
Stop Calling It Deglobalisation
Every trade conference I have attended this year has had a panel with deglobalisation in the title. The panellists agree it is happening, disagree on how fast, and go home. I would like to suggest, as politely as a columnist can, that the word is
Ports Are Infrastructure. Price Them Like It.
Ask a harbour master what a berth costs and you will get a tariff book. Ask what the same berth is worth at 06:00 on the first morning after a storm, with fourteen ships at anchor and three terminals asking for the same slot,
The Green Premium Belongs on the Bill of Lading
Every week I talk to someone at a carrier who is trying to sell cleaner shipping and someone at a brand who says they would buy it. They are usually describing the same voyage. They rarely see the same number.
The gap between them is
Weekend feature
Most read
This week-
No One on the Bridge
5 min -
Copper's Quiet Squeeze: Why Smelters Are Paying Miners to Take Their Ore
3 min -
Bitcoin Miners Are Buying the Gas Oil Fields Used to Burn
3 min -
Container Rates Fall for a Sixth Week. Here Is Where the Slack Is.
3 min -
Offshore Wind's Real Bottleneck Is a Ship With Legs
3 min -
Ninety Days With Box NRVU 418220-7
6 min
Trending
Editor's picks
Past picksThree to read
Every Friday the editors pick three stories worth your full attention: one long, one short, one strange.
How a Bicycle Gets Its Nationality
Frame from Vietnam, gears from Japan, wheels laced next door. Whether this bike pays duty depends on a 74-line spreadsheet and a welding hall built partly to change the answer.
Salt, Seen From Above
Pink, turquoise, bone white. A year over one coastal salt works, from the first flooding of the pans to the last harvest, shot from a drone at 120 metres.
Stacked to the Ceiling: What a Warehouse of Unsold Solar Panels Says About the Market
Aisle fourteen holds 61 megawatts of solar modules that nobody has cleared through customs. The pallets have been there since winter, and the price on them has fallen every month.
Long reads
All Long reads
Watch
All video
Listen
RSS
Episode 1 ·
· 3 min
The Manifest, Episode 40: Fog, Copper and the Crewless Ship
Why container rates keep falling, why smelters are paying miners to take their ore, and what happens on the night a feeder ship sails with nobody aboard.
Play-
3 min
Tariff Engineering, or Why Your Sneakers Have Felt on the Soles
Episode 2 · -
3 min
The Grain Corridor, Told by the People Who Load It
Episode 3 · -
3 min
A Night Shift on the Quay: Forty Metres Up With the Crane Operators
Episode 4 · -
3 min
The Battery Park Next to the Substation
Episode 5 · -
3 min
The Last Paper in Trade: Letters of Credit Go Digital
Episode 6 ·
The picture
Photo desk
Markets
Markets desk-
btc
Bitcoin
-
eth
Ethereum
-
eur-usd
EUR/USD
-
gbp-usd
GBP/USD
-
usd-cny
USD/CNY
-
usd-jpy
USD/JPY
Crypto via CoinGecko, currencies via the ECB
By the numbers
SourcesThe week in freight
Four figures our desks kept coming back to · checked by the data desk
- 6 weeks in a row of falling container spot rates on the Break Freight Index
- 40 ships at anchor off the Elbe at the height of the fog
- 12,000 t of cargo on the first crewless feeder crossing of the North Sea
- 5% of tankers on our map silent for more than twelve hours on an average day
Sources
The Break Freight Index and the Tanker Map, both built by our data desk; the shipping desk's reporting from the Elbe anchorage and from the Skarv's control centre ashore.
The week ahead
Full agendaMonday
- Oct 26 Break Freight Index, weekly release at 10:00 London time
- Oct 26 Harbourline Europe, the ports and terminals conference, opens in Antwerp
Tuesday
- Oct 27 Kessel Bay Port Authority publishes its monthly throughput report
- Oct 27 Harbourline Europe: the carriers' panel on blank sailings
Wednesday
- Oct 28 Monthly options expiry on copper and aluminium
- Oct 28 Harbourline Europe closes
Thursday
- Oct 29 Tanker Map monthly report on silent ships
Friday
- Oct 30 Three to read: the editors' picks of the week
- Oct 30 Chokepoint Tracker weekly summary
From the archive
Browse the archive
Newsroom
All authors-
Maren Okafor Shipping editor11 stories -
Kenji Arakawa Data editor9 stories -
Priya Venkataraman Energy editor8 stories -
Jonas Halvorsen Covers currencies, central banks and trade finance: the plumbing that turns a cargo into a payment8 stories -
Tomás Reyes Commodities correspondent covering copper, lithium and grain from the Andes to the Black Sea7 stories -
Leila Farahani Trade policy reporter6 stories
Reading list
All bookmarksWhat do we cover?
48 stories
Recommendations
All recommendations
Break in your inbox
Every new story, as soon as it is published. Unsubscribe at any time.