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AS
containerships become larger and with only
a few major ports capable of handling the
biggest, shippers have come to question
whether ship size does them more harm than
good.
Along
the east coast of the United States, whose
hinterland ranges to the Mississippi River,
lies 70 per cent of American consumers,
the world's biggest retail container shipping
market.
But
east coast US ports are only beginning to
dredge channels to the depths needed for
14,000-TEUers that are expected to transit
the Panama when fully expanded in 2015,
which some say will result in more awkward
hub and spoke transshipment operations slowing
deliveries yet again...
It
took more than a decade of environmental
research and litigation to get the Savannah
River dredging to a shovel-ready state,
and while the current US Administration
is keen to carry out dredging at Charleston
and elsewhere, it still promises to provide
more work for lawyers and academics than
hard-hats for years to come.
It's
the same in Europe. China Shipping Container
Lines (CSCL) praised the efficiency of Hamburg,
Germany's most important port 100 kilometres
up the River Elbe, but thinks it is too
shallow as it is. "Ships are becoming
larger and larger. For Hamburg, it is very
important how deep the water is," a
CSCL executive told London's Containerisation
International.
Plans
to deepen the Elbe have been around for
years, and were well under way until the
Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig
ruled that work must stop until eco-concerns
were settled. It may well take years before
all appeals are exhausted and the project
is truly shovel-ready.
While
a problem for carriers, customers are not
nearly as enamoured of mega ships as shipping
lines, reports London's Loadstar. Economies
of scale appear to accrue to carriers while
shippers cope with problems - added landside
congestion, reduced frequencies and a need
to hold more costly inventory than ever
before.
There
is the problem of the limited number of
ports worldwide capable of handling ships
greater than 10,000 TEU in an age when 16,000-TEUers
are in service and 18,000-TEUers are on
the way.
Twenty
loops today employ ships above 10,000 TEU,
according to Alphaliner's survey of all
regular liner services as at December 2012.
Sixteen of these serve on the Far East-Europe
route, while two run from the Far East to
the US west coast, and one from the Far
East to the Middle East.
All
but two call at Shanghai, making China's
commercial capital, the planet's mega ship
hub with its 18 calls a week. Next comes
Shenzhen with 17, while Ningbo is close
behind with 15 weekly mega ship calls.
But
with the opening of the expanded Panama
Canal, and the raising of New York's Bayonne
Bridge in 2015, the stage is set for the
US east coast ports to receive mega ships
in the next three years.
This
is regarded with a growing sense of alarm
by shippers at the recent TOC Americas Cold
Chain and Container Supply Chain conference
in Panama.
"The
problem is not cost," said Kraft Foods
logistics manager Hernan De Mezerville told
the Loadstar. "The carriers are trying
to maximise ship size but if they are reducing
the frequency of the ports that they reach
that will cost me in cash flow."
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