Container shipping is generally considered a global business. This truth may not hold from a single-company perspective. The companies’ physical operation networks show that container carriers operate differently and follow different paths in their internationalisation development. Additionally, the degree of internationalisation, measured on the basis of sea-oriented operations, differs from that measured according to land-oriented front-end marketing and sales activities. The purpose of this study is to further examine the internationalisation patterns of shipping lines. An examination of the front-end activities and the structures of leading container-shipping companies is conducted. The sales office networks of the sector’s 20 largest companies worldwide (by twenty-foot equivalent unit capacity) are analysed as key indicators. The numbers of sales offices are measured by analysing the websites of the sample (20 companies), as well as annual reports and other publicly available data sources. The findings show that not all shipping companies are international, by virtue of the industry. While it is difficult to observe differences in the overall patterns of the sales networks at a macro level, some companies differ in their activities. The data set also shows that market share and total capacity are not necessarily good indicators of a carrier’s worldwide presence. This research is based on secondary data. Other important transactional and market-oriented considerations should be examined before drawing conclusions about the internationalisation of container-shipping companies and of the industry. This paper contributes to the relevant existing research, particularly by adding its view on the demand-oriented criteria as suggested by Dunning and Lundan (2008).
The report is organized as follows. The introduction will lay out the current state-of-play of eco-efficiency and the zeitgeist of the current situation on maritime that we find ourselves in, in 2020. The next section will provide some historical context looking back to 2010 and 2000 to trace the trajectory and developmental course on which we are. The core contribution of this report is the Maritime Operations Roadmap that can be found in Figure 1 on page 9. This illustration plots the expectations for technological capabilities and policy from 2020 to 2030.
Carriers in liner shipping markets frequently make public announcements of general rate increase (GRI) intentions, based on which EU authorities have concerns as to whether this harms market competition. This paper aims to empirically investigate how well the GRI system works from an industrial competition perspective, which will indirectly indicate whether carriers are able to manipulate spot rates following GRI announcements. Taking the Far East–North Europe trade between 2009 and 2013 as an example, the paper first reveals the gradual increase of GRI frequency and size, which reflects carriers’ attempts to restore profitability against overcapacity. However, out of all the GRI events only 28.6% were observed to be successful. Since these GRI successes must be the results of either price collusion (if any) and/or normal rate change by carriers in response to fundamental market developments, the effective collusion, if it exists, is actually lower than 28.6%. Next, we identify eight factors influencing GRI successes. To further assess their impact, we applied an ordered logit regression analysis, which, based on four of the factors involved, yields good predictability for GRI success. The four factors, in sequence of explanation power, are the total capacity of GRI carriers, the idling fleet size, the spot rate level, and the average ship-loading factor. Clearly the latter three factors are market fundamentals, which are unlikely to be influenced by an individual carrier in the short term. In actual fact, the conclusion reached is that there is little evidence that carriers can manipulate and distort spot rates through GRIs.
In this report, the PrimeFish project provides an overview of the European and especially the EU seafood sector in the context of global development; i.e. development in other continents with a focus on large commodity groups for fisheries and aquaculture.
We solve a central problem in the liner shipping industry called the liner shipping fleet repositioning problem (LSFRP). The LSFRP poses a large financial burden on liner shipping firms. During repositioning, vessels are moved between routes in a liner shipping network. Liner carriers wish to reposition vessels as cheaply as possible without disrupting cargo flows. The LSFRP is characterized by chains of interacting activities with a multicommodity flow over paths defined by the activities chosen. Despite its industrial importance, the LSFRP has received little attention in the literature. We introduce a novel mathematical model and a simulated annealing algorithm for the LSFRP with cargo flows that makes use of a carefully constructed graph; we evaluate these approaches using real-world data from our industrial collaborator. Additionally, we compare the performance of our approach against an actual repositioning scenario, one of many undertaken by our industrial collaborator in 2011. Our simulated annealing algorithm is able to increase the profit from $18.1 to $31.8 million using only a few minutes of CPU time. This shows that our algorithm could be used in a decision support system to solve the LSFRP.
The legal limbo that defines the maritime space over which the process of delimitation of the outer continental shelf is applied appears today as an eminently practical question that needs to be addressed. The institutional framework provided by UNCLOS, which establishes the existence of an internationalized space on the seabed - the area - seems limited to respond to a debate that confuses Geology with Law. This article focuses on the powers of the International Seabed Authority as an agency authorized to act on behalf of Mankind by exploring its weaknesses in its exercise of this mandate in the context of that process. By analyzing the conflict between the expansionist goals of States and the embodied principle that gives the Authority the assignment to act on behalf of Mankind in securing a space that, according to the text of the Convention, belongs to it, we conclude that there are apparent inconsistencies in the institutional framework created the Montego Bay Convention. In our exegesis of Part XI of the Convention, we work on the cogent force of that principle and raise questions about the legal legitimacy of the entire process, ie in the absence of a clear statement by the above-mentioned Authority. We conclude that the text of the Convention provides the possibility of a direct intervention by the Authority but that there are still no political conditions for such a possibility to be realised.
Considering 91 countries with seaports, this study conducted an empirical inquiry into the broader economic contribution of seaborne trade, from a port infrastructure quality and logistics performance perspective. Investment in quality improvement of port infrastructure and its contribution to economy are often questioned by politicians, investors and general public. A structural equation model (SEM) is used to provide empirical evidence of significant economic impacts of port infrastructure quality and logistics performance. Furthermore, analysis of a multi-group SEM is performed by dividing countries into developed and developing economy groups. The results reveal that it is vital for developing countries to continuously improve the quality of port infrastructure as it contributes to better logistics performance, leading to higher seaborne trade, yielding higher economic growth. However, this association weakens as the developing countries become richer.
This chapter examines the development of the law of the sea at the time of the League of Nations with specific focus on the entitlement to the oceans and the use of the oceans. This chapter first addresses the entitlement to and jurisdiction over marine spaces by examining the issue of the territorial sea, the contiguous zone, bays and islands. The chapter then examines the issue of the use of the oceans, focusing on the regulation of fishing and navigational rights in straits. Finally, the chapter will conclude that the era of the League of Nations can be thought to be one in which the traditional paradigm of the law of the sea was being formulated. However, the paradigm was qualified by the absence of an agreement with regard to the breadth of the territorial sea and rules regarding the delimitation of the territorial sea. In this sense, the paradigm in that period remained incomplete. Furthermore, the time was not ripe to establish a global legal framework for the conservation of marine living resources. Overall the law of the sea at the time was characterised by the reconciliation of competing interests of individual states.
This chapter argues that state-owned Chinese integrated maritime logistics enterprises are about to change the power balance vis-à-vis the hitherto dominant, privately owned enterprises based in Europe. This shift, which has been actively supported as part of China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, will directly affect the European Union’s common transport and competition policy. Within the larger Belt and Road Initiative, the Maritime Silk Road project can be seen as the umbrella concept for the comprehensive management of the entire supply chain between China and Europe. We discuss possible policy implications for both China and the European Union when it comes to managing the subtle balance between geopolitical considerations and efficient operations of trade and transport controlled by a few dominant actors. As part of our theoretical framework, we use two extensions of the classical obsolescing bargaining model: the one-tier bargaining model and a bargaining model of reciprocation. By combining the two models, we aspire to explain the changing nature of bargaining relations between, on the one hand, the Chinese government and its state-owned enterprises and, on the other, the private-owned European companies as a function of the goals, resources and constraints of the involved parties.