U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Sherwood on Tuesday ordered a hearing for Friday for the world’s seventh largest ocean shipper. Hanjin’s Seoul-based rival has proposed a total of 13 extra services, four to the US and nine to Europe, as freight ranging from computer monitors to apparel pile up at various ports, with desperate suppliers to brands such as Polo and Nike rushing to meet delivery deadlines and obligations ahead of the year-end holiday season.
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Creditors of Hanjin Shipping, led by the state-run Korea Development Bank, said earlier it would not extend fresh financial aid to the ailing shipper now under court receivership, calling on the shipper to provide collateral for any funding.
“While it will take some time to fully resolve the situation, we expect slowly to start seeing some improvements”, the government said in the statement. “A lot of new surcharges have been applied (by cargo handlers and operators) starting over the weekend and the Federal Maritime Commission is making sure they don’t violate the Shipping Act”. Hanjin identified 14 USA -bound ships in court papers, but Volkov said she did not have information about the other vessels.
Hanjin now has 43 ships en route to deliver goods and has “no idea when their cargo will be unloaded”, CEO of the maritime analysis outfit SeaIntel Lars Jensen said to the Journal. Two other ships, the Gdyina and Jungil, were originally set to offload in Long Beach.
The tenuous financial situation of Hanjin Shipping – the world’s seventh-largest container shipping company, which accounts for almost 8 percent of America’s Pacific maritime trade volume – has made headlines for days as dozens of the outfit’s vessels sit stranded at sea.
On August 31, Hanjin Shipping Co. lost its funding which left its ships stranding outside ports around the world. Some of those ships have been seized by the company’s creditors. Some vessels have also been seized.
It remains unclear if the vessel would proceed to stops in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Seattle, he added.
Three Hanjin ships continued to sit Tuesday off the coast of Southern California, with their crews (normally about 25 workers) languishing.
The map below shows the locations of Hanjin’s container ships. The group will raise the money by providing a stake in overseas terminals, like the one in Long Beach, to secure loans worth about $54 million.
And some of that cargo, it turns out, belongs to Samsung.
Hanjin’s woes were having wider knock-on effects.
Esquel Group, a Hong Kong-based manufacturer for fashion brands including Nike, Hugo Boss and Ralph Lauren, is hiring truckers to move four stranded containers of raw materials to its factories near Ho Chi Minh City as soon as they can be retrieved from ports in China.
Hanjin’s fiscal troubles have come to a head during peak shipping season for products that will be sold during the holidays, a period in which the retail industry reaps roughly 20% of its sales for the year, according to the National Retail Federation.
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“Globally, there’s a lot of cargo that is still languishing”, said Ryu Je Hyun, an analyst at Mirae Asset Daewoo Co.
