The UK Chamber of Shipping is lobbying more for action on crewing, green shipping and digitalisation during the G7 meeting, saying the industry’s message is not getting through enough

Vessel queues into Yantian may have reduced over the past week at the port’s main anchorage but are still significant, while ships looking to avoid the disruption continue to build up at neighbouring facilities. Elsewhere, new figures show that global box demand eased through April, yet shippers are warned to expect equipment shortages and delays to prolong through to 2022

V.Group says the broad spread of crew-source countries has been beneficial. However, new fuels and technologies will place increasing pressure on training and skills

The International Transport Workers’ Federation has recovered $45m in owed wages last year alone; a significant figure given the challenges

Anglo-Eastern chief executive Bjorn Hojgaard told a crewing webinar 18 of his company’s 30,000 seafarers had died from Covid-19 in recent months, with an average age of 37

Shipping is facing intense pressure to comply with decarbonisation targets but ‘the Greta Thunbergs of this world’ are likely to call for a shortening of timelines, a webinar discussion heard

The Paris Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control said the share of deficiencies over seafarer employment agreements rose 58% from 2019 to 2020, in a year when inspections plunged because of the coronavirus pandemic

No one is listening to calls for seafarers to be seen as key workers, Hans Boers believes. The best way to get seafarers back home is to dig into many years of crew-change experience

The "seafarer scalper-like" model in China's traditional crewing business has led Mr Mi to create his start-up, aiming to digitalise the service and reduce job-hunting and training costs for seafarers. And he is seeing the latent opportunities, with growing users and data on his digital platform

Being agile and talented are not enough for an entrepreneur in maritime. A degree of commercial shrewdness is vital, plus an ability to see the long-term vision. A two-year time horizon will not cut it

The Global Maritime Forum says 7.4% of seafarers are still working on vessels beyond their contract, up from 5.8% a month ago, according to data from 10 big shipmanagers

US Trade Representative Katherine Tai last week called attention to the issue, saying forced labour ‘harms the lives and wellbeing of fishers and workers around the world and it must be eliminated’