Three European organizations representing shippers,
ocean carriers and ports have agreed to cooperate to develop joint "best practices
and key performance indicators" for short-sea shipping.
The European Shippers’ Council, the European Community Shipowners’
Associations and the Federation of European Private Port Operators announced the
innovative plan at the ESC’s annual shipper conference, held on Oct. 20 in the port of
Marseilles.
The three organizations, representing transport users and providers in
short-sea shipping, aim to define specific service quality benchmarks relevant to this
transport mode.
Once quality objectives have been defined, users and providers would
measure actual performance against mutually agreed benchmarks. The ESC said that the
performance indicators would include obligations for both transport providers and
shippers, as partners in the supply chain.
The performance indicators would be used as a method to address common
problems, rather than as a tool to blame any service failures by shipping lines.
"The development of best practice and key performance indicators
will improve environmental performance, transport service quality and efficiency,"
said Gary Mansell, chairman of the ESC.
There is currently no plan to develop quality benchmarks for deep-sea
container shipping.
The European initiative on short-sea transport follows the adoption in
April of performance indicators for air freight by the European Air Shippers’ Council and
airlines.
The air freight standards have been adopted by several major European
shippers, forwarders and airlines.
The members of the Tri-Partite shippers’ meeting – a group of global
shipper organizations – endorsed the EASC quality benchmark initiative at their gathering
in Canada in September.
The global shipper group, which comprises the ESC, the U.S. National
Transportation League, the Japan Shippers’ Council, the Canadian Shippers’ Councils and
five other Asian shippers’ organizations, said that they would work together to implement
common industry standards in air cargo.
EUROPEAN SHIPPERS, CARRIERS PLAN QUALITY BENCHMARKS
EUROPEAN SHIPPERS, CARRIERS PLAN QUALITY BENCHMARKS
