16 Oktober 2011

[161011.EN.SEA] Will The Emergence of Semi-liner Services Help Save Container Operators In This Market? (Transpacific)

IN recent weeks The Container Shipping Manager has been looking into the growing trend among container shipping companies to launch semi-liner or multipurpose/break bulk services to help offset the difficulties they are facing in the container business.

So far we have looked at the cost scenario on both the container and break bulk markets and in our most recent article we compared the cost situation that carriers face on the Asia-Persian Gulf trade for both shipping sectors, and it appears that there are some cost advantages to the semi-liner, multipurpose services.

Today we will look to see whether that advantage extends to the transpacific trade—a trade that container shipping lines are finding particularly challenging this year…

As in our previous article we will refer to the multipurpose semi-liner services as MPP semi-liner, for easy reference.

Also, as we did in the previous study, we will look at vessels in the handysize class, which is at the smallest end of the MPP vessel spectrum, and this is the size of vessels that the container shipping lines are operating in the MPP business today. We will, as such, contrast them with similar sized vessels in the container sector.

In our last article we found that the MPP services have two advantages over the container services. The first advantage is the lower operating cost, based on the current market conditions, and the second advantage is the fact that MPP services have access to the highly valuable project cargo sector.

For our study today on the transpacific trade we will focus specifically on services running between Asia and the US west coast. We will follow the same methodology as we used in our previous study on the Asia-Persian Gulf trade to see whether the advantage that was found on that trade extends to the transpacific for the MPP service.

Again, we will look briefly at the potential revenue generation on both services, but the focus will be more centred toward the current cost environment.

Let’s now take a look at the trend in headhaul spot rates on the Asia-US west coast trade and see where the rate is today. We have used the rate for Shanghai to Los Angeles as our guide, as Los Angeles and neighbouring Long Beach collectively account for over 60 per cent of US and Canadian west coast cargo volumes. 


Source : TCSM, 11.10.11.

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