MAJOR TIRE SHIPPER, MICHELIN, WARNS CONTAINER LINES ABOUT FEEDER TREND

MAJOR TIRE SHIPPER, MICHELIN, WARNS CONTAINER LINES ABOUT FEEDER TREND    Michelin, the big tire producer and exporter, warned container shipping lines that they must be responsive and flexible to meet shippers’ needs, including when problems are created by feeder connections.
   “We monitor very closely the quality performance of carriers,” Brian Moulton, head of the ocean management committee of Michelin, told the Intermodal 2000 conference in Genoa, Italy.
   Moulton said that it was not acceptable for a shipping line to cause a week’s delay to the shipment by missing a feeder connection and using the following week’s feeder.
   “With larger and larger vessels, we see an increasing use of feeders,” he told the conference. “This creates more opportunities for things going wrong.”
   Moulton also warned that shipping lines and their alliances now have a tendency to change their vessel rotations often, but a service change or the end of direct calls at a port can “undermine established supply chains.”