Tuesday, February 18, 2014

MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES OF EMPTY MARINE CONTAINERS


THE BACKGROUND
Since the beginning of containerization , the shipping industry has shown enviable developments in increased productivity, vessel capacity, speed ,safety , reduction in service time and cost. Despite these achieved efficiencies, marine container logistics has been suffering from severe trade imbalances between the major trading regions. And these imbalances cause one of the biggest hidden costs to the shipping industry– repositioning of empty containers!  As per an article appeared in the  Shippingwatch , every year Maersk Line moves around 4 million empty container from point A to point B which costs around USD 1 billion. 
Drewry Shipping Consultants estimated that there were over 82 million port to port moves of empty TEUs worldwide in 2010.  The Port of Los Angeles alone reported 831,370 empty TEU shipments during the first half of 2011, representing over 42% of their outbound container traffic.
 
                                                 

 
Empty Containers are repositioned at various levels , namely Global ,interregional, regional and local.
 
(b)   The inter-regional level involves either balancing repositioning inside a wide geographical area ( within Asia , Europe , ISC) or on a leg finally leading to global repositioning ( Tuti / Chennai > Colombo / Port Kelang > Europe / USA).
(c)   The regional level involves the empty balancing between ports / ICDs of same region  (Cochin to Tuti / Mangalore /Bangalore/Coimbatore) by road , rail or by sea using coastal services.
(d)    The Local level involves empty shunting between marine terminal and depots, the  storage and maintenance issues.
 

Each empty container move involves fuel and electrical consumption by ships, terminals, trucks, and railroads and results in excessive unproductive empty vehicle miles in a region. Hence, another important aspect to be considered associated with repositioning empty containers is the carbon footprint. 
Due to insufficient port / depot infrastructure and poor logistics management strategies of the carriers, the whole process of empty container evacuation used to be cumbersome , time consuming and expensive. This situation demands for an empty container management strategy which rationalizes the repositioning, storage and maintenance of empty containers in major importing regions. For formulating a suitable management strategy, issues mentioned in the below chart are to be addressed.
MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES
Various empty container logistics management optimization strategies for minimizing the cost to carriers are currently either being explored or implemented to a certain extent. The most popular strategies includes :  
(i)            Effective service net work design with empty container reposition considerations to avoid vessel calls dedicated to empty repositioning.
(ii)           Matching cargo to empty containers to reduce empty frequency
(iii)          Design of a empty storage & maintenance network
(iv)          Transportation options for less expensive repositioning.
Among the upcoming management strategies to reduce the energy, cost and effort to reposition empty container , the most popular one is  the concept of folding containers.  Presently a number of options are under various stages of implementation, including Staxxon folding/nesting container technology (New Jersey), Holland Container Innovations (Delft), CargoShell (Rotterdam) and Foltainer (Brisbane), all of them have developed their own collapsible or composite container designs.  If empty containers can be folded and nested and moved in sets of 2 or more,  occupying the same space and dimensions as one container,  operators  could  save huge money on account of transportation, handling and storage. 
Another recent innovation is the Tworty Box, two 20 ft containers that can be linked together to form a single 40 ft unit ! The first tworty box completed its maiden voyage from Hamburg to Montreal on the containership OOCL Montreal.  
Even though the empty container repositioning is a non-revenue generating, complex, expensive and undesirable exercise, it is an integral part of the maritime sector, which balances demand and supply between regions. Ultimately only time will tell whether it is folding containers, tworty  boxes, trans-loading, or some other solution to address this growing global issue .