Ship Universe Weekly Recap
This is a full rundown of this week’s coverage on Ship Universe. To get this by email every Saturday, subscribe here. Ship Universe Weekly It was a busy week for shipping, with shifting risk...
Top 30 Maritime Piracy Incidents in 2025
2025 didn’t look like a clean “one-region problem” for piracy. The year’s most serious cases spread from guns-and-hostages boardings in the Singapore Strait, to crew-take kidnappings in West Africa, to a Somalia-area resurgence with...
Hengli Heavy’s $1.9bn build-out as shipyard capacity growth pushes deeper into the 2028–2029 cycle
Hengli Heavy Industry says it will invest about 13.5 billion yuan (roughly $1.9bn) in a major capacity expansion at its Dalian-area complex, a yard that has rapidly stacked an orderbook reportedly stretching into 2029....
Autonomous Navigation Goes Fleet-Scale
HMM has signed contracts with HD Hyundai’s Avikus to deploy its AI-based autonomous navigation solution (HiNAS Control) across 40 HMM-operated vessels, paired with an MOU with HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering (HD KSOE)...
HMM Goes Big on Autonomous Navigation
HMM has signed contracts to install HD Hyundai Avikus’s AI-based autonomous navigation system across 40 HMM-operated vessels, moving the tech from limited trials into a broad operational deployment. The shipping impact is less about...
Orca AI Review: A Digital Lookout for Real-world Risk
Orca AI sits in the “digital watchkeeper” slot on a modern bridge: cameras, sensors and AI algorithms watching 24/7, flagging the targets that matter and feeding shore teams with hard data on how voyages...
Court Orders Put Offshore Wind Back on the Water and Shipping Feels It First
A string of court moves is reopening offshore wind construction just as winter calendars and vessel availability get tight. Equinor’s Empire Wind has been cleared to restart work after a judge weighed “irreparable harm”...
AI ETA Prediction for Ships: 2026 Guide
AI ETA prediction is where a lot of “shipping delays” quietly get decided: if your ETA is wrong, everything downstream gets noisy (berth plans, pilots, yard moves, trucking windows, and customer updates). Going into...
Piracy Baseline Resets Upward
ICC IMB’s annual Jan–Dec 2025 data shows 137 piracy and armed robbery incidents globally, with the Singapore Straits alone accounting for 80 of them and perpetrators succeeding in 91% of incidents. It is not...
Intermodal Europe 2026 Review
Intermodal Europe 2026 is a container-industry meet-up built for real procurement conversations: equipment owners, lessors, manufacturers, tech providers, and operators comparing boxes, monitoring, M&R, leasing structures, repositioning workflows, and the practical details that decide...
Chornomorsk Berth Strike: Black Sea port-call risk pricing
A reported ballistic-missile strike hit port infrastructure at Chornomorsk on January 15, 2026, damaging a Malta-flagged civilian vessel that was preparing to load containerized cargo, with one crew member reported injured. Ukrainian officials’ statements...
US Seizes Sixth Sanctioned Tanker
A pre-dawn interdiction of the Guyana-flagged Aframax Veronica in the Caribbean marks the sixth Venezuela-linked tanker seized since mid-December, reinforcing that sanctions enforcement is now a capacity and scheduling variable for tankers trading near...
Big 5 Breakdown: Size, Fuel Burn, and Carrying Capacity
Modern liner networks aren’t built around “a ship,” they’re built around five physical constraints that drive everything else: how big you can fit through canals and ports, how much you can carry in TEU...
Caribbean Compliance Shockwave as U.S. Warrants Target “Dozens” of Venezuela-Linked Tankers, and the Trade Tightens Overnight
A reported push to secure court warrants for dozens more Venezuela-linked tankers, paired with fresh at-sea seizures, is turning the Caribbean into a higher-friction operating zone for any voyage that even loosely touches Venezuelan...
Maersk puts MECL back through Suez in a structural Red Sea return with real network consequences
Maersk has decided to route its MECL service (Middle East/India ↔ U.S. East Coast) back through the Suez Canal and Red Sea as a structural change rather than isolated test transits. That matters because...
AI Collision Avoidance for Ships: 2026 Guide
AI collision avoidance is basically the industry’s attempt to turn “what the bridge team already does” into a more consistent, less fatigue-sensitive process: detect early, classify correctly, fuse sensor inputs, and suggest COLREG-aware actions...
Red Sea Routing Optionality Reopens
Maersk says it will structurally return its MECL service to the trans-Suez / Red Sea route (first sailings mid-January, with the service change taking effect on a late-January departure), while the UN Security Council...
Trelleborg Marine & Infrastructure Review: Quiet hardware that protects ships and berths
Trelleborg Marine & Infrastructure sits at the “hardware that quietly keeps ports running” layer of shipping. From its Dubai headquarters, it designs and supplies fenders, docking and mooring systems, navigation aids, buoyancy and sealing...
Yangzijiang Maritime Loads Up on Forward Tonnage With a 16 Ship Newbuild Slate
Yangzijiang Maritime is scaling its asset-accumulation play with up to 16 newbuilds across bulk and tanker segments, using a mix of firm orders and options at multiple Chinese yards. The headline for the market...
TOC Americas 2026
TOC Americas 2026 shifts the conversation to the Caribbean gateway of Cartagena. If you work in ports, terminals, or the container supply chain, this is the kind of event where practical operator pain points...
Iran Port Approaches Go Cautious: Offshore Holding Builds as Navigation Interference Spikes
A cluster of commercial ships is reported holding at anchor outside Iran’s port limits as U.S.–Iran tensions rise, turning routine arrivals into a higher-friction operation. The near-term shipping impact is practical and immediate: longer...
Shipping Risk Repriced Across Three Fronts in 48 Hours
In the last two days, shipping has been hit by a fast-moving stack of shocks that all push in the same direction: more friction per voyage. In the Black Sea, drone strikes on tankers...
Iran Ports “Pause” Shows Up in AIS
Ship-tracking and shipping sources indicate dozens of commercial vessels anchored outside Iranian port limits as U.S.–Iran tensions rose, a behavior shift that can quickly translate into schedule risk (waiting time), tighter approvals, and higher...
Maritime Compliance Penalties Ranked: Fines, Detention, and Off-Hire Exposure
Compliance rarely blows up because someone forgot a checklist. It blows up when a rule turns into a cash event: a port hold that eats days, a forced corrective action you can’t postpone, a...
U.S. China Trade Weakness Forces a 2026 Network Reset
A fresh project44 datapoint is putting U.S.–China demand weakness back into 2026 network planning conversations: the report pegs U.S. imports from China down 28% year over year and U.S. exports to China down 38%...
AI Machine Vision on Ships: 2026 Guide
AI machine vision on ships is shifting from “nice to have cameras” to a practical bridge and operations layer: automated detection of small targets, floating objects, and developing close-quarters situations, plus better watchkeeping support...
China Starts Penalizing Starlink Use in Its Waters
Chinese maritime authorities have begun issuing penalties after finding vessels using unapproved LEO satcom (widely reported as Starlink) inside Chinese jurisdictional waters, with the Ningbo case framed as a first-of-its-kind enforcement action and clubs/correspondents...
Asyad’s VLCC trio at Hanwha as forward supply grows, sentiment shifts
Asyad Shipping has signed contracts for three VLCC newbuilds at Hanwha Ocean, adding another meaningful slug of crude-tanker capacity to the 2028–2029 delivery window. It is still “paper” tonnage today, but orders like this...
Warrants, Not Warnings: U.S. Preps a Bigger Vessel-Seizure Wave in Venezuela’s “Grey” Tanker Trade
The U.S. is reported to have moved beyond one-off interdictions and into a broader court-driven campaign: filing civil forfeiture actions and seizure warrants aimed at dozens of tankers linked to Venezuelan crude movements. The...
Breakbulk Americas 2026 Review
Breakbulk Americas 2026 is Houston’s three-day meet-up for project cargo and breakbulk logistics, built around real routing, capacity, and execution conversations. If you move heavy-lift, OOG, or industrial cargo across the Americas, this is...