<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">Fesco, Russia's largest ocean container shipping line, announced it has signed an agreement to acqui</div>

Fesco, Russia's largest ocean container shipping line, announced it has signed an agreement to acqui

<div class="phx-topic">Fesco, Russia's largest ocean container shipping line, announced it has signed an agreement to acquire the operator of the Port of Vladivostok, its home hub, in a $180-million deal that will give it a Pacific gateway.Fesco will acquire 100 percent of M-Port Ltd, the owner of 95.2-percent of the shares of the port in two stages, funded from the $206 million it raised in a share issue in July.The Vladivostok-based carrier will first buy a 50-percent stake in M-Port from MMP, a metals company, for $90 million. It has agreed to acquire the remaining 50-percent stake within three years with the price linked to the port's financial performance.The deal will give Fesco container facilities at Russia's three major gateways &amp;mdash; the Baltic, Black Sea and Pacific &amp;mdash; as it pursues a strategy to provide integrated logistics and container operations.Fesco said it plans to build new terminals at the port, and integrate the port into intermodal operations, focusing on containers and automobile transportation.The Vladivostok purchase comes just over a month after Fesco acquired DSF, a Dutch container feeder ship line, which serves Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Russia and the Baltic states.&amp;mdash; Bruce Barnard in London</div>

Container lines

Fesco acquires Port of Vladivostok operator

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">Hanjin Shipping Co. announced Tuesday that it will enter the North Atlantic trade on Jan. 1 in partn</div>

Hanjin Shipping Co. announced Tuesday that it will enter the North Atlantic trade on Jan. 1 in partn

<div class="phx-topic">Hanjin Shipping Co. announced Tuesday that it will enter the North Atlantic trade on Jan. 1 in partnership with existing trans-Atlantic carriers Cho Yang Shipping Co. and DSR Senator Lines, most likely as a member of the rate- setting conference known as the Trans-Atlantic Agreement.Ronald P. Schley, Hanjin's director of sales and marketing for North America, said South Korea's largest liner company will enter the highly competitive North Atlantic in a "limited" way by chartering 300 20-foot equivalent containers, or TEUs, each week in each direction. He said Hanjin at this time will not have its own vessels in the trade. Mr. Schley said Hanjin has applied for membership in the TAA, the group of 15 shipping lines that sets rates in the North Atlantic and controls more than 70 percent of the cargo.The news shattered the hopes of shippers who look to any newcomer — especially a major independent carrier such as Hanjin — as a lower-cost alternative to the TAA. That conference was formed in 1992 and has successfully introduced two rate increases. It reportedly plans another rate increase for 1995."If they enter the trade as part of the TAA, they're not going to have any impact at all," said Jil Morley, transportation administrator at Blue Diamond Growers, the large almond cooperative in Sacramento, Calif."You can't get anywhere playing one member of the TAA against the other. They're all in cahoots in refusing to do IA's (take independent action on rates). They're all the same," Ms. Morley said.Ed Shilz, president of the Beverage Importers Freight Association of Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., said several shippers had hoped Hanjin would enter the trade as an independent. He said that even though the TAA has recently offered to make some changes in its contracting policy and dealings with cargo consolidators, shippers consider the proposed changes to be cosmetic.Shipping executives, of course, applaud Hanjin's decision."We think it's a damn good idea that they're coming in as a conference member," said Mike Diaz, owners representative in the United States at DSR Senator Line in South Plainfield, N.J. "It's certainly a responsible way to come into the trade."Dodd Fiori, senior vice president of marketing and sales at NYK Line North America, said that NYK entered the North Atlantic the very same way more than a year ago. NYK is slot chartering — renting out space — slightly more than 300 TEUs a week with its partners Hapag-Lloyd and Neptune Orient Lines. He said NYK is achieving about 80 percent to 90 percent utilization of its slots.Mr. Schley said Hanjin expects to build business in the Atlantic from the base of shipper customers it has in the Pacific, where it is one of the top five carriers."We're getting very positive feedback, especially from the larger companies. The global shippers are seeking us out," he said.Mr. Schley said Hanjin will begin in September and October talks with shippers about volume-discount arrangements known as service contracts. In the Atlantic, service contracts normally take effect on the first day of the new calendar year.He said the pricing situation is still up in the air because of the uncertainty surrounding the TAA's structure. Since 1993, the conference has had a two-tier pricing scheme in which so-called structured carriers (the nine larger lines) have priced their services higher than the six unstructured or smaller carriers. TAA recently proposed abandoning the two-tier scheme.Mr. Schley said Hanjin would like to enter the trade as an unstructured carrier, but the two-tier pricing scheme is under investigation by government regulatory agencies in Europe and the United States."That must be hard for him to swallow, philosophically. Hanjin has been a strong independent in the Pacific," said Ms. Morley of Blue Diamond. She said that with only 300 TEUs a week and no ships in the trade, Hanjin will have trouble forming the type of partnerships with shippers that it has in the Pacific."That partnershipping sounds good, but it has an empty meaning when it comes to the Atlantic," she said.Hanjin's weekly service will be confined to the trans-Atlantic leg of DSR Senator-Cho Yang's round-the-world service, which is called the Tricon service. However, it will close the gap in Hanjin's east-west services, allowing the carrier in effect to circle the globe in the east-west direction.Mr. Schley said Hanjin's new Atlantic service will be directed from its Hamburg, Germany, office.</div>

HANJIN TO ENTER N. ATLANTIC TRADE BEGINNING JAN. 1

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">Crowley Maritime Corp. announced the election of Thomas B. Crowley Jr. as chairman and chief executive.</div>

Crowley Maritime Corp. announced the election of Thomas B. Crowley Jr. as chairman and chief executive.

<div class="phx-topic">Crowley Maritime Corp. announced the election of Thomas B. Crowley Jr. as chairman and chief executive, filling the positions left by the death of his father, Thomas B. Crowley Sr., on July 7.The board also announced the election of Molly Murphy Crowley, widow of the late Mr. Crowley, to the corporation's eight-member body, effective immediately.Mrs. Crowley, formerly of Portland, Ore., is one of the owner/directors of Cronin &amp; Caplan Realty Group Inc., based in Portland. Mrs. Crowley will continue to reside in the San Francisco Bay Area.Mr. Crowley, the grandson of the founder, also will continue in the positions of president and chief operating officer of Crowley Maritime Corp., the parent company of Crowley American Transport Inc. and Crowley Marine Services Inc. Crowley American Transport conducts liner and common carrier operations, while Crowley Marine Services provides worldwide contract and marine transportation services.</div>

CROWLEY SON NAMED CHAIRMAN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">Shipping lines that fled the French port of Le Havre last month because of labor stoppages are expec</div>

Shipping lines that fled the French port of Le Havre last month because of labor stoppages are expec

<div class="phx-topic">Shipping lines that fled the French port of Le Havre last month because of labor stoppages are expected to return by the end of the month, the port authority said Tuesday.Andre Graillot, director general of the port, said at a news conference in Paris that several regular lines that had canceled service to Le Havre had either already returned to the port or were expected to begin regular calls by the end of July.The list includes the Vessel Sharing Agreement, made up of Sea-Land Service Inc., Nedlloyd Lines, P&amp;O Containers and Orient Overseas Container Line, which interrupted service to Le Havre on June 21 and is expected back on Tuesday.The port estimates that 15 percent of its container traffic fled because of the labor strife and that almost all of it has now returned. Officials say they do not have an estimate of how much the port lost in revenue because of the traffic disruptions.The SLCS group of Canada Maritime and OOCL, with service to Montreal, already has returned to Le Havre after leaving for Antwerp, Belgium, on June 19.Also returning is the so-called ACE consortium (Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha, Neptune Orient Lines and OOCL), which canceled one regular call to Le Havre but reinstated it for Saturday. Maersk Inc., which pulled its North American service from the port for three weeks, will return Sunday.The first line to leave Le Havre after two three-day strikes in June was Compagnie Maritime Belge, which calls every 10 days as part of its trade to West Africa. It left at the beginning of June but just resumed calling Le Havre. The Trio line, made up of Hapag-Lloyd AG, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines and Nippon Yusen Kaisha, skipped calls in June and suspended service at the beginning of July, but it is now back at the port.Dockworkers and stevedoring employers at the port signed an agreement 10 days ago aimed at ending the labor strife.Mr. Graillot said he was "surprised" at the attachment to Le Havre shown by shipping companies in the face of the port's labor problems.Stevedoring employers agreed to hire 200 more dockworkers as salaried workers in exchange for a pay freeze until the end of next year, more flexible working hours and guarantees of five days advance warning of strikes and negotiations to try to avoid them. The first 67 dockworkers were hired this week.Claude Pigoreau, president of the association of stevedoring employers, the Groupement des Employeurs de Main d'Oeuvre, said the decision to hire the dockworkers is a "bet that traffic will increase at the port."He said stevedoring companies continue to lose money and that in order to justify the hiring of new employees, traffic must increase by about 150,000 20-foot equivalent units annually.Le Havre has 9 percent of the market share of the six largest Northern European ports. This has fallen by 25 percent to 30 percent since 1989, mainly because of labor problems that began in 1991 when the French government announced its cargo-handling reform.</div>

LINES GRADUALLY RETURN TO LE HAVRE AS LABOR SITUATION STABILIZES

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">South Korean container shipping lines face the prospect that many of their vessels will be activated</div>

South Korean container shipping lines face the prospect that many of their vessels will be activated

<div class="phx-topic">South Korean container shipping lines face the prospect that many of their vessels will be activated for war service if hostilities break out with North Korea, although the lines have so far informed few U.S. shippers of their contingency plans. ''Our emergency-planning department is looking at how to switch the fleet when an emergency breaks out, but the details are secret," said K.C. Seo, a spokesman for Hanjin Shipping Co. "We're now doing the planning with government authorities."Two of South Korea's other major shipping lines, Hyundai Merchant Marine Co. Ltd. and Cho Yang Shipping Co., said they had not yet been contacted by the government but were prepared to contribute as required.The United Nations is considering imposing economic sanctions against North Korea for refusing to cooperate with U.N. nuclear inspectors. North Korea says it would consider sanctions an act of war.The potential for conflict increased when North Korea said it would withdraw from the International Atomic Energy Agency, but the potential for disruption in shipping services has not been broached with most U.S. shippers."It certainly would impact a lot of things," said Sidney Goldschmidt, transportation manager at Central National Gottesman Inc., a large paper shipper in Purchase, N.Y. But "have any of the Far East carriers mentioned the crisis? The answer is no."Gerri Furman, multinational-contract manager at Xerox Corp., also said the subject had not come up in recent discussions with Korean lines with which the company ships.Mr. Seo of Hanjin declined to provide details of Hanjin's contingency plans last week, citing national security.A transport-requisition law went into effect in South Korea in 1982, giving the government the right to repatriate ships, aircraft, trucks and other vehicles in the event of a national emergency. Seoul has not yet ordered such a repatriation, said Ihlhan Yoo, an official with the South Korean embassy in Tokyo.The problem is magnified beyond the Korean peninsula because Korean shipping companies are established in many trade lanes that do not include Korea. Hyundai usually has less than 10 percent of its fleet in East Asia, ''but within seven to 10 days most could arrive in Korea," said Soon Young Koh, an official in Hyundai's research department.The Korean-flag fleet could play a major role in the crisis, particularly in tasks related to economic stabilization, Mr. Koh said.These might include transporting oil or grain, since the Korean agricultural industry would likely come under pressure if fighting broke out. South Korea could also be inundated with refugees from the North, which might also increase the demand for food, he added.Merchant-marine vessels might also be called on to carry war supplies, materiel and trucks from Japan or the United States, Mr. Koh said.South Korea has stepped up contingency planning and started monitoring the price of major commodities in the face of a military threat from North Korea.Most if not all of the senior Korean executives at the U.S. divisions of Hyundai, Hanjin and Cho Yang are members of the military reserve and would be called home if hostilities broke out.Kyung H. Koo, Cho Yang's executive vice president, added that despite the short distances involved on the Korean peninsula, merchant ships could still prove essential for creating alternate supply routes.Cho Yang would make its vessels available to the government as needed, Mr. Koo said, although it would prefer not to release the nine vessels currently in its round-the-world service.Mr. Koo said Seoul understands it would take up to two weeks to return many of the commercial ships to Korean waters.South Korea has a total of 4,883 transportation companies — mostly bus companies but including 23 long-distance trucking companies and 1,179 general trucking companies.South Korea's ports would also obviously play a key role in delivering and routing essential material. The nation's largest port is Pusan, with 16 vessel berths, while Inchon has about the same number. The Mokpo port, near the southern tip of the peninsula, also has ample capacity.</div>

CONTAINER SHIPPING LINES MAKE EARLY PLANS IN EVENT OF WAR

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The world of LTL is slow to embrace change. Business anachronisms permeate current supply chain processes. These vestiges of the way things used to work define the LTL freight transportation procurement process of many modern shippers.David Knuth, logistics specialist at IEWC, a global supplier of cable and wire based in Wisconsin, is happy to have modernized the RFP process, automating the entire LTL bidding procedure with Bid$ense, SMC³’s automated truckload and LTL freight transportation sourcing solution. But when prompted, he can still recall what once was.In his previous job, a large part of his duties were consumed by creating an intermodal bid package for carriers. In a spreadsheet, Knuth detailed the company’s volumes lane by lane, taking care to delete any errant keystrokes or misleading data. He would then email out the information to each carrier, taking time to respond to detailed technical questions about the spreadsheet data. Finally, he had to compile all the results, create an algorithm that would compare the carriers on each lane, and award the business.“It was a huge undertaking. It took about four months to do,” Knuth said of the old process. “It was almost a full-time job for that part of the year, every year.”In his new job at IEWC, he sat down with Bid$ense on day one and was amazed at the capabilities. Knuth had never before used a bid tool. SMC³’s latest versions of Bid$ense automate the process even further, taking truckload and LTL RFPs entirely online. The tool draws on RFP best-practices protocols to streamline the bidding communication process, enabling bidding carriers to respond accurately and promptly to shipper requests. The solution also does all the distribution work automatically, electronically submitting shipper bid data to carriers based on their actual service capabilities and performance records. Carriers are alerted with timely prompts for RFP deliverables, so shippers aren’t waiting by the phone for responses.Another benefit of automating the process is the data-cleansing assistance. When Knuth sent spreadsheets to carriers, data errors might cloud the bidding process; he might have to resend data or simply accept a price that did not truly reflect the costs of doing business. Data cleansing is incredibly beneficial, he said.The spreadsheet technique also made bidding analysis an onerous task. Since Bid$ense automates and streamlines the entire RFP process, intensive examination is now simple. SMC³ knows that each bid has more than one best outcome. With uniform responses from each carrier, shippers can quickly rank results and create an unlimited quantity of what-if scenarios to make the optimal procurement decision.Jesse Burnett of Central Garden &amp; Pet experiences many of the same benefits. Founded in 1980, Central Garden &amp; Pet has spent the last three decades growing from a small garden supply company to a provider of a range of products from dog chews and bird seed to soil supplements and natural insecticides. For much of its life, the company shipped these disparate goods via LTL and truckload carriers to retailers throughout the country, relying on each business unit to negotiate directly with their freight transportation providers. This arrangement worked fairly well for a small company, but as Central Garden &amp; Pet expanded, leadership decided to consolidate decision making.Burnett helped centralize the transportation decision making in 2015 with SMC³’s Bid$ense. Before Bid$ense, every business unit operated independently as far as negotiating with carriers.“There were a lot of different things just floating around,” he said. “We didn’t have master agreements in place; no national pricing at all. The pricing from carriers was just all over the place, depending on where you were.”The transformations he saw with Bid$ense were immediate. Burnett has been using the tool about every other year since its implementation at the company. Central Garden and Pet’s $19.6 million 2019 LTL bid saved the company just more than 9 percent when compared to its historical average. For Burnett, though, bid automation extends far beyond savings.“We knew that we weren’t getting the best pricing offer from our carriers just because nothing was centralized,” he continued. “We knew that if we combined everything from all these business units and paired it with one corporate offering, then it would drive some cost benefit with it.”When the company initially decided to centralize bid procurement, executives researched a number of different methodologies and technologies. In the end, though, Burnett found that Bid$ense was both widespread and well known, and that his carrier partners already knew how to use the application. Burnett also highlighted the data-cleansing process as a major benefit, saying the rigorous process ensures that carriers always return the best price.“It definitely has helped drive savings,” he said. “Any time you go out there and you drive that competitiveness with the carriers and they know they’re in a bid environment, it seems to sharpen their pencils.”Transportation procurement is an integral part of the modern supply chain. With Bid$ense, shippers can develop a strategic implementation plan that saves them time and money, but also helps them create strong relationships with their carrier partners. These carriers appreciate the solution’s data-cleansing process; when carriers receive a complete shipment history and future volume forecast, they don’t have to guess on pricing. Carriers that receive more data from shippers get a complete picture of that shipper’s freight, allowing them to accurately plan instead of simply preparing for the worst-case scenario. Clean data presented through an automated system can lead to both bigger shipment savings and a lasting partnership between carrier and customer.Whether customers are looking to streamline over-the-road transportation bidding by automating the RFP process or create an entirely new, centralized sourcing process, Bid$ense has the analytical horsepower to get the job done.SMC³ 2020 Customer Case Study

SMC3rates_shutterstock_5247046.jpg

Shippers save money, time with automated transportation bidding tools

If there’s one immutable truth in the world of logistics, it’s this: LTL is an inherently complex form of transportation. Tariffs, rates, DIM weights, transit times — it’s enough to confuse even seasoned logistics professionals. The solution to this knowledge gap has historically been on-the-job training or university supply chain education, but for a variety of reasons there is now a pressing need for third-party, remote LTL training that prepares logistics workers for transportation success. Global Scope Can Overlook Local Intricacies In the past, professionals looking to move into a supply chain career learned about the basics of supply chain from universities. However, many of these college supply chain programs are now global in scope, focusing on worldwide supply chain management instead of the intricacies of specialized domestic transportation. And even these programs, which used to be widespread, are becoming less common. LTL is not an industry of broad-brush strokes; supply chain professionals really need a pointillistic understanding of the logistics of LTL in order to excel in the industry. Accelerating Need for Dedicated LTL Education This lack of specified training put the onus on employers to prepare new hires with the LTL knowledge needed to do their jobs. Dedicated LTL study is a necessity, not a luxury. At the same time, changes in LTL and the broader supply chain world are accelerating. The reliance on e-commerce has ballooned since the start of the pandemic, and last-mile LTL shipments and related e-commerce strains on the supply chain won’t diminish once social distancing abates. That genie isn’t going back into the bottle. So supply chain employers need logistics workers that are fully versed in all aspects of the industry, ready to solve unique shipping and delivery problems based on their extensive supply chain knowledge But why care about LTL? It’s been reported that some shippers in today’s world are no longer concerned with what mode is used to ship their goods. A Multimodal Approach Ensures On-Time Delivery This mode agnosticism means supply chain stakeholders have to be well versed in all modes of transportation. As unforeseen weather events and other disruptions, such as protests, become more common, savvy logistics employees will need to be armed with familiarity of all modes, not just the most popular, to ensure that freight is delivered on time, without damage, and in the most financially expedient way possible. Offerings like SMC³’s LTL online education courses cover a wide range of topics from LTL basics and operations to more advanced concepts like pricing analytics and transportation law. The company also has plans to continually refresh content, adding new expert presenters and taking the feedback of students to make the courses even better as time goes on. Learn more about&nbsp;<a href="https://logisticstrainingcenter.com/smc3-courses/" rel="noreferrer" class="joc_admin__link">SMC³’s LTL Online Education program</a>&nbsp;and view the 2021 hybrid schedule, featuring live industry experts,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.smc3.com/onlinelearning2021/" rel="noreferrer" class="joc_admin__link">here.</a>

SMC3rates_shutterstock_5247046 (1).jpg

Filling the Supply Chain Education Gap with LTL Education Courses

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