Dutch Shippers: Container Shipping Alliances Threat to Competition

European Shippers Dutch shippers have voiced fears that the alliances in the container liner shipping industry will hinder competition, reducing the choices companies have when shipping their cargo overseas. These were the results of a survey the Dutch Shippers’ Association (EVO), representing the interests of 15,000 manufacturers, retailers and wholesalers, collectively referred to as shippers, orders every year among its members on their sentiments towards container liner shipping companies. This is the fourth consecutive year the survey has been conducted by the Rotterdam School of Management of the Erasmus University Rotterdam, with shippers evaluating the degree of service levels of the container liners which they have done business over the last twelve months on reliability, communications, pricing and shipping routes. The most important conclusion is that just as in 2014, shippers ranked the reliability of booking as the most important thing. Reliability was followed by availability of cargo space, cost of service, accurate documentation, delivery of information, customer service quality, quality of equipment, transit time, contract quality and accurate billing. Asked about concerns shippers have within the container liner shipping industry, ‘Competition Issues’ ranked highest, followed by financial stability and lack of customer service, rate instability and costs: Shippers’ interests is the end to end performance of their supply chains and deep see is a critical enabler of this. EVO trusts that this survey is contributing to an improved understanding of the shippers’ needs and that this will enable all stakeholders to unlock our common opportunities. With these results in mind, EVO wants to improve the conversation between supplier and customer, EVO said. Because together we can navigate towards more reliability’ the association added. The carrier that performed best on an overall basis, was awarded the EVO Container Liner Shipping Award 2015. This year Hanjin Shipping won the prestigious award. In previous years the award was won by Japanese carrier ‘K’ Line and Swiss MSC.