Date: Thursday July 10, 2008 Re:  Argentina The roads connecting to Buenos Aires were opened for transit and after more than 100 days of strikes, congestion is affecting the export operation. Everybody is delayed with the export schedules causing lack of space on the vessels, in the terminal ports and delays in the delivery of containers in Buenos Aires: This is the situation per shipping line: Hamburg Sud – has no more space on vessels via Buenos Aires until at least week 30. Hapag Lloyd - to North Europe there is a restricted allocation. In addition, the last vessel did "cut & run" and left all the cargo behind. Next vessel is overbooked, we have no certainty about how many containers we will be able to load. MSC - the situation is critical. Vessel MSC Leigh was really overbooked and MSC decided to bring forward the cut off during the weekend, so a lot of containers were not received yesterday in the port as it was expected. The terminal has no more space, so they are trying to reduce the quantity of containers in the terminal port. In addition, there is a lack of empty containers for next vessel (specifically flexi units) so delays are expected. Maersk - There is a lack of space in their service to North Europe, but they are offering some bookings using Hamburg´s service to Rotterdam or Tilbury. In addition to these situations, the biggest terminal in Buenos Aires port (Exxolgan), which is used for vessels of Hamburg Sud, Hapag Lloyd and Maersk, announced Tuesday, July 8th, that they will restrict the reception dates for export containers, because there is no more space for storage. This is complicating the rotation of trucks (full containers delivered in Buenos Aires and empty containers coming to Mendoza). This situation will remain until the operation comes back to normal again.