[091210.EN.SEA] Is Intra-Asia Ready For The Mega-Vessels ?

SPEAKING at the recent TPM Asia conference in Shenzhen, Evergreen Marine chairman Bronson Hsieh called on ports in the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia to improve harbour facilities, to accommodate 8,000-TEU ships.  And while it is still largely impossible for 8,000 TEU ships to ply much of Intra-Asia trade, there remains the question of whether this should it be the objective of terminal operators in the region.  What would the advantages be, or for that matter, the disadvantages? And in weighing pros and cons, is such an objective desirable or even achievable? "Quite honestly, I don't think it's very practical," Wan Hai Lines special assistant to the president Randy Chen said.  Mr Chen did admit that it may be possible at some point, but he also highlighted some of the problems that such a phenomenon would create.  "We've gone through the process when volumes collapsed on the longer haul trades, my company pulled out of the European trade with a series of 4,000-TEU vessels, and redeployed them within our Intra-Asia network, essentially cascading within our own network from 2,500 TEU to 4,000 TEU.  "But it was tremendously challenging because it required us to grow not just our cargo base, but also to find like-minded carriers that also wanted to load on that service," he said.  In Wan Hai's case, the carrier suddenly found itself in a position where it needed to almost double its carried volumes, given the additional slot capacity created by cascading.  If we then consider that 8,000-TEU vessels are to be deployed on the trade, the carrier has to almost quadruple volumes, the Wan Hai man. "That's a very challenging proposition."  The second point he raised was that while Asian ports are generally more productive than their counterparts in the West, pointing particularly to ports in the US, he said this did not necessarily mean that they are as well equipped to handle the larger vessels as effectively, particularly in relation to keeping to the schedules that shippers in Asia are more accustomed to. Source : CSM, 16.11.10.