This article tells the tale of Zim, the Israeli ocean liner firm, which features Asia to West Coast US routes. The article tells a lot about Zim’s business focus, and its status.
Apparently they earned over a billion dollars, while blanking sailings on some routes as much as 67%. On the ZX2 route, Zim only sailed 9 out of 27 times, blanking the other 18. On the ZX3 route, half the sailings were blanked.
How can you make more money by not sailing as often? Try making the customer wait for the product!
Greg Miller, Senior Editor Follow on TwitterWednesday, November 17, 2021
It seems that ocean carriers that own or have an interest in port terminals are getting preferentially served by those terminals. It’s what we would expect. But nowadays, it may mean months of delay for other ships, such as chartered vessels.
Should part of the charter for a terminal be some form of ‘common carrier’ commitment? A requirement to unload ships that present in an order defined by some rule?
There has been lots of study of queues with one or multiple servers, and different size unloading jobs presented, with different priority schemes. It’s classic operations management. It should be possible to define a service policy that would be fair to the facility owner and would help to prevent excessive delays for those in the less preferred categories.
For instance, should a ship waiting for three weeks have preference over a recently arrived ship owned by the line that also has a stake in the terminal? I think ocean carriers and terminals have an interest in seeing that the policy for accepting ships for unloading is clear and fair to all who arrive. If it’s clearly stated, then ship owners and charterers can make estimates of when they will be served at the port, and would choose the port over another that had no policy.
The guesswork of choosing a port begins weeks earlier, at sea, or even when loading the ship. While a ship can be diverted en route, it adds mileage to the trip (and time). If port delays are long and unknown, it becomes impossible to make a reasoned decision; ‘Russian roulette’ for the carrier and cargo owners.
Here are more examples of Non-Operating Owners chartering ships. And they are increasing in price. These carriers are outside the liner alliances, and allow the ships to move as they choose instead of following liner schedules. They can choose routes which avoid the major choke points in container handling we see now.
It’s another way to escape or try to escape the port congestion we see at major ports.
But there are increasingly signs that the congestion is spreading from the major ports such as LA and Long Beach to smaller ones such as Tacoma and even some East Coast US ports.
How do carriers escape the congestion then? At least with their own ships, not assigned to rotations, they can pick and choose. that flexibility may aid in winning contracts to shop goods.
Supply Chain and Logistics 