Container shipping lines must diversify into logistics
and move away from basic commoditized transport services, a senior executive of Orient
Overseas Container Line said.
Shipping lines will need to redefine their strategies and move into
logistics services, while maintaining ocean carriage as their core business, Jim Poon,
managing director of OOCL (Asia Pacific) Ltd., told the Container Shipping Summit
conference in Hong Kong.
"By defining ourselves as providers of transportation by ocean, carriers have created
a marketing myopia and commoditized their business," Poon said. Logistics service
will provide a new source of revenue to shipping lines and help them to differentiate
their services.
Poon said that the traditional business of moving cargo from port to
port can be considered as "hardware-based" services. But now carriers are moving
into a service industry that will "depend more on information technology and
comprehensive service attributes."
Poon said that logistics has become an important value-added service in
both the production process and the marketing channel. It has changed the basic concept of
thinking for both shippers and transport service providers, as decisions on transport
methods can involve cost trade-offs between expenses related to transport, handling,
storage and related administrative work, he added.
"All of these different functions can indeed be integrated into a
series of processes including production, storage of goods, transport of goods, and
eventually marketing to the consumers," the OOCL executive said.
OOCL EXECUTIVE SAYS SHIPPING LINES MUST DIVERSIFY
OOCL EXECUTIVE SAYS SHIPPING LINES MUST DIVERSIFY
