General

Monday, 08 October 2012 14:31 |

Important changes to FDA rules through the Food Safety Modernization Act

The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) was signed into law by President Obama on January 4, 2011.

Some of the main aspects of this new law which will affect your imports are as follows:

Preventive controls : for the first time, the FDA has a legislative mandate to require comprehensive, prevention-based controls across the food supply
Reinforced inspection and compliance : the law specifies how the FDA should inspect food producers
Imported food safety and importer accountability: for the first time, importers must verify that their foreign suppliers have adequate preventive controls in place to ensure safety
A BIENNIAL RENEWAL REGISTRATION REQUIREMENT FOR ALL FOOD FACILITIES (mandatory submission between October 1^st and December 31^st, starting in 2012)

The above is a short summary of the principle changes which will be enforced gradually over the next few months. More on the FDA – Food Safety Modernization Act Internet page at :

http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/FSMA

Friday, 21 September 2012 10:51 |

United States Maritime Alliance and International Longshoremen’s Association extend negotiations for 90 days

In the interest of the United States of America, the United States Maritime Alliance and the International Longshoremen Association reached an agreement on Thursday September 20^th, 2012 to continue their discussions and have postponed the deadline to December 29^th, 2012, relaxing the pressure on the U.S. ports and allowing all of us (involved in international business and more particularly in wines & spirits shipments) to carry on working in a strike free climate.

Learn more with :

Transportation insurance

Shipping containers through oceans has been a success over the decades. It’s so efficient that we forget the natural environment can be really tough and damageable. Fortunately incidents occur very rarely but when it occurs it can be severe like the MSC ZOE vessel in North Europe or the HAPAG-LLOYD YANTIAN EXPRESS on route to Canada. Despite they are very large container ship, till the water or weather conditions can be severe as you can read in the here joined article.

We keep on inviting you to cover your shipments with a transportation insurance. TRANSO’s one is particularly fitted for wine shipments from door to door (not only seaborne). We highly recommend you to confirm its use for each and every container you place with TRANSO.

Anyhow, we thank you for 2018 support, wishing you the best for 2019, at least a safe year.

Read more:

The container lines recent history

The shipping industry has been moving on with further concentration as here below reminded.

However, 2018 has recorded even lower scores in terms of schedule reliablity. Not only vessels are getting later but when they are late, the delay is further than the years before. With very slim global profit (when positive) carriers are reluctant to increase vessel speed for schedules recovering. Other reasons come from more and more port congestions at loading/discharge and the truck driver’s shortages in USA and also at countries of origin. Improvments would be expected and welcome but the recent performances do not support positive changes.

More than ever you can rely on TRANSO team and services to assist you for monitoring as accurately as possible the supply chain of your wine imports.

2014: Hapag-Lloyd integrated with CSAV

2015: Cosco merged with China Shipping

2016: CMA-CGM acquired APL

2017: Hapag-Lloyd integrated UASC

2017: Maersk acquired Hamburg Süd

2018: Cosco acquires OOCL

2018: ONE as a merge of K Line, MOL & NYK

Change in MED services

Both Ocean Alliance and THE Alliance services from MED to US East are merging into one single service as from early December.

The 2 existing services are deploying 4500 TEU vessels. The new one will deploy 8500 TEU vessels. The total capacity is slightly lower.

However in case of delays or blank sailings, alternative are very limited ; for instance, from FOS, there is no direct sailing alternative (only via Algeciras with Maersk or Valencia with MSC).

Carriers are announcing this is to recover from low freight rates and improve the service reliability as we have all noted less accuracy and more lead times in worldwide shipments.

Read more: