Wavertreelad
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- Joined
- 24 Feb 2013
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- 811
Agree, and to be fair I am looking at it from a slightly different angle. Basically all the global major shipping lines all work with groups, 2M comprising Maersk and MSC (No 1 & 2 globally in capacity), G6 comprising six lines Hapag Lloyd, OOCL, NYK, APL, Mitsui, and Hyundai. CHYK includes Hanjin, K Line Yang Ming and Evergreen and finally 3 Oceans comprising CMA-CGM, China Shipping and United Arab Shipping (UASC) to which Hamburg Sud cooperates. Some of the groups are global, others are confined to specific trades like on Europe to Montreal Hapag partner OOCL both of G6, with 2M member MSC. The rest of G6 serves Canada via Halifax NS on a Southampton service operated by Hapag, whilst Maersk operates a completely independent service to both Montreal and Halifax that has no UK Port call. All four groups operates between North Europe including the Meditterrean and the Far East, China with multiple weekly services covering different port combinations. Some Carriers call eastbound at the Middle East, and westbound at Colombo but none call at Indian west coast ports and Pakistan which are not equipped to handle much above 9000 teu vessels. The four groups all operate multiple sailings across the Atlantic but port call combinations differ but Liverpool only handles vessels to and from ports north of Cape Hatteras. At the moment all bar one service from North Europe turn back to North Europe either on the USA East Coast or Gulf Ports, including Mexico. The one exception transits the Panama Canal and calls at Los Angeles and Oakland before transiting the Pacific to China and Japan before returning the same route. The four groups all operate in the Pacific and from the Far East to USA East Coast via Suez.
At the moment only a limited number of US Ports can handle anything about 9000 teu, and critically this excludes New York and New Jersey which is by far the largest port on the US East and Gulf Coasts. At the moment much of America's trade with the Far East and China moves through Los Angeles and Oakland and is railed across the country. When the widened Panama Canal locks open for traffic next year the present restriction of about 5000 teu will be removed making it possible for vessels of up to 14000 teu to sail to and from the East Coast of America to the Far East and China, potentially reducing costs and also avoiding the chaos that tends to happen when the stevedores contracts expires and work to rules start.
The ability to use these larger ships on more trades and particularly the Atlantic will allow the carriers to configure their various services and port calls to better utilise these large containerships on a global basis and could have significant implications for Liverpool and the UK presence reliance on services into the south of England. Only this week, G6 and CMA have introduced direct port calls on their Europe Far East services to Gdynia in Poland and Iskerderun in Turkey as the cargo flows can justify the call, and with the present overcapacity and falling rate levels , carriers are looking for niche markets.
The Port of Liverpool is at the moment a none base port as far as the carriers serving the Far East trades are concerned, so they impose a premium charge of about US$200.00 per container on containers transhipped into the port from Antwerp, Rotterdam and Le Havre. If the Carrier serving Felixstowe or Southampton charges a full round trip cost of the import move to say Manchester, the cost could be as high as GBP800.00 or more. Paying the premium and the local haulage from Liverpool would be considerably cheaper but the transit time because of the feeder operation is increased by about a week, so at the moment the feeder operation really only tends to appeal to owners of none time sensitive or low value cargo. Any carrier calling direct would probably reduce the base port premium or even waive it in a effort to secure support and gain market share. MSC have the most experience and are now operating two sailing a week to and from Antwerp, I would estimate exchanging about 3000 teu per week judging by the size of vessel employed. CMA-CGM operate two smaller 800 teu vessels from Le Havre plus a similar size vessel from Rotterdam which is part of it's Iberian coverage through subsidiary Macandrews. This subsidiary operates a weekly service to Portugal and three services a week to Bilbao all in the 800/900 teu range. Some North American Carriers serving Liverpool use these services as feeder operation to service the Iberian peninsular. CMA-CGM and Macandrews serve Dublin, Belfast and Greenock on some of the Liverpool service, and they swap slots with Peel owned Coastal Container Line and Rotterdam based but Peel owner BG Freight Lines who provide up to three sailings a week serving Rotterdam and Liverpool as well as Dublin, Belfast and Greenock with one service also calling Felixstowe en route to Liverpool. Finally X-express container lines offer a weekly feeder from Southampton to Liverpool.
Whilst X-press operates as a pure feeder operator, BG also offers it's own European service , but the main business is also feedering for the major carriers, their biggest customer being Maersk. Typically, the X-press service will carry containers from APL, Hapag, ACL, CMA and it's subsidiaries, NYK, OOCL although some of these lines may restrict their use to certain customers or trades. BG services, carry containers for Evergreen, ACL, Hapag, MSC, Hamburg Sud, CMA-CGM, China Shipping and Maersk for mainly for Dublin and Belfast. Maersk and some of these carriers restrict the service to certain customers only.
ACL feed cargo to and from Antwerp for their Grimaldi services to West Africa, Brasil and Mediterranean on their North Atlantic service as does Hapag Lloyd, whilst Hapag/OOCL and MSC all have the option of the joint Montreal service to feeder containers to and from Antwerp, Bremen and Le Havre if necessary.
Due to all the slot sharing and multiple port rotations it's impossible to provide accurate numbers of containers using the feeder operations but given the size and number of vessels deployed the assumption must be in the numbers are in the several thousands a week. Of course, most of these containers will be destined or originate from "local" industry so distribution by rail in most cases would not be economic. However, securing these local volumes using feeder operations is crucial to encourage the global carriers to call Liverpool, the big difficulty is that Peel has now to convince multiple carriers in a group to secure a port call, instead of just one carrier.
As far as the China Shipping question is concerned, I would doubt that this policy is a question of volume exceeding train capacity, I suspect it's more to do with gaining local market share to reduce the number of empties being returned to China which have to be paid for by the shipowner.
