2016 – the most turbulent year in container shipping's 60-year history

Five mergers and acquisitions and one bankruptcy is the final toll of a truly tumultuous year for liner shipping.

They put in the shade other notable events, such as the opening of the enlarged Panama Canal in June, mandatory weighing of all loaded containers (VGM) from 1 July and the record scrapping of some 700,000 teu of redundant container tonnage.

It was a year of reckoning for an industry that had maxed out its collective credit card, spending billions of dollars in ordering bigger and bigger ...