EUROPEAN SHIPPERS, CARRIERS PLAN QUALITY BENCHMARKS

   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.