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As
late as two years ago, Panama was confident
it would slash the west coast market share
as the great American gateway for Asian
cargo. Ports from California to Washington
states rallied to fight the Panama threat
and still have much to worry about but the
battle goes between Panama and Suez.
In
this context, Suez wasn't considered much
use back then, certainly not for container
coming from east of Singapore. But as the
once big ships of 8,000-TEU were increasingly
regarded as smaller ships as vessel size
rose from 10,000, 13,000 to 18,000-TEU,
the game changed.
Also,
high-speed "just-in-time" buzzwords
of yesteryear were forgotten to save on
rising bunker costs. Slow steaming came
into CFO vogue as they saw cost savings
in bunker burn that were almost magical
if a ship slowed from 24 to 11 knots, the
pace of World War II Liberty ships.
One
tends to lose sight of the scale involved.
For example, one could fit the cargo capacity
of one Liberty ship into a 18,000 TEUer
51 times. To carry the cargo of a single
18,000-TEUer requires a crew of 20, some
say 13. To carry the same cargo in Liberty
ships, at 40 men each, would require 51
ships with a total crew of 2,142.
The
first cellular containership to arrive in
Montreal was the 500-TEU Manchester Challenge,
typical of the half dozen then plying the
transatlantic trade in 1969. It would take
36 Manchester Challenges to fill an 18,000
TEU Triple E class ship on the Asia-Europe
route today.
The
enormity of the new ships has transformed
the maritime world. The Panama Canal, with
its locks, was built for another age. And
there is no ship built that is too big for
the Suez Canal, which is without lock limitations.
The
increase in vessel size dramatically brought
down the unit cost, yet demanded corresponding
increases in scale along the entire supply
chain. Thus giant factories were required
to fill the ships, giant warehouses had
to be built so consumer prices could be
kept low so huge volumes continued to flow.
With
slow steaming resulting in longer transits,
more stock had to be available closer to
retail shelves and increasingly for direct
distribution via e-commerce online ordering.
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