Panama Canal News Updates

For the fourth consecutive year, Fitch Ratings has affirmed the Panama Canal’s “A” investment grade rating with a stable outlook for its long-term issuer default rating and its senior unsecured notes, according to the Panama Canal Authority.

Port Tampa Bay completed a $63 million expansion of its Big Bend Channel a year ahead of schedule, port officials said, as the Sunshine State eyes grabbing more freight from shippers while serving a growing distribution corridor in Central Florida.

Towering over the Port of Baltimore’s Seagirt Marine Terminal, Evergreen Line’s containership Triton arrived in the predawn hours of May 24 after navigating the Chesapeake Bay carrying 14,424 containers, making it the largest container vessel to dock in Maryland.

The Panama Canal is doing so well, it got its credit rating upgraded by Moody’s Investors Service.

Capt. Tom Goodwin stood on the bridge of an oil tanker and looked upon the familiar Bayport Container Terminal. But instead of peering out a vessel’s front windows, he was in a high-tech simulator gazing intently at 13 monitors.

Fresh from a $5.25 billion, nine-year expansion that’s upending decades-old trade routes, it turns out the Panama Canal is also doing a little good for the planet.

One year into operations of the expanded Panama Canal, the freight transportation world has witnessed leviathan containerships, gargantuan land-based cranes and dredging projects along the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts, but intermodal shipping professionals say it’s too early to quantify the precise impact of the massive infrastructure project.

Southern ports are experiencing a record foreign trade boom thanks in part to an expanded Panama Canal that permits Asian cargo ships to reach them more easily.

The Panama Canal truly entered the big-ship era the week of May 8 when the largest vessel to date — a vessel from Asia that is as long as the Eiffel Tower is high and 158 feet wide — transited the expanded canal en route to the United States.

Chinese state firms have expressed an interest in developing land around the Panama Canal, the chief executive of the vital trade thoroughfare said, underlining China's outward push into infrastructure via railways and ports around the world.