The impact of a looming reduction in ocean carriers and their vessel-sharing alliances could make 2017 a challenging year for US exporters. As carriers collaborate to streamline their operations and reduce operating costs, I wonder what this means and how it will impact our business. My concerns range from choosing the right partners for shipping our 48,000 TEUs from North America, to paying close attention to the financial health of those partners.
Regarding the Ocean Alliance and the THE Alliance, exporters have seen the initial alliance network layout, yet there is still a level of apprehension when considering the overall implementation and how it will benefit the shipper. In this new, unsettled operating environment, many questions arise, such as how difficult it will be to phase vessels in and out of existing networks, and what the impact will be on current transit times, port calls, and vessel space. How do we split our weekly volumes and not have too many containers on the same vessel? How does the merger of the three Japanese carriers ultimately influence our book of business? One would expect that alliances provide increased competition, carrier choices, and improved efficiencies for BCOs, yet it would seem future consolidations will result in lesser choices for BCOs.
The outcome of future mergers and alliances hopefully will result in far more efficient global ocean transportation networks that can serve a broader set of everyone’s logistical needs at a reasonable price. Unfortunately, this may not occur in 2017.