NVO Countdown – No. 9

By Eric Johnson

   Welcome to the fourth installment of our yearlong countdown of the top 12 non-vessel-operating common carriers for U.S. inbound containerized cargo.
   Using data provided to American Shipper by the trade intelligence firm Zepol Corp., we’ll take a closer look at each of these companies in terms of where their cargo originates, where in the United States it’s destined, which liner carriers they use, and how their volumes have trended quarter to quarter.
   The series will count down monthly until we analyze the top U.S. inbound NVO in December. Data is derived from Zepol’s database, which uses U.S. Customs data direct from carrier bills of lading as they are entered in the Automated Manifest System.
   The top 12 U.S. inbound NVOs for this series were determined based on their total volume in 2011, though the statistics provided by Zepol will be updated monthly so that each NVO will be examined based on the most recent 12-month period.
   This month, we’ll look at Topocean, a California-based NVO with extensive port coverage in China and Asia.
   In the 12-month period from April 2011 through March 2012, Topcean moved 128,917 TEUs on U.S. inbound trades. In 2011, the company’s total U.S. import volume rose 5.2 percent.

Source: Zepol

   Topocean has seen a distinct slowing of volume in the first quarter of 2011, with February and March its two lowest volume months in the last year. The February numbers are not unusual, given the shortness of the month and the fact that volume tends to recede after Chinese New Year, but March volume was 19.1 percent lower than volume in April 2011.
   According to Zepol, 82.4 percent of Topocean’s volume originated in China over the past 12 months – roughly in line with the other NVOs surveyed by American Shipper so far this year. Another 5.1 percent came collectively from Hong Kong and Taiwan. The second and third largest sources of volume were Vietnam (4.2 percent) and Indonesia (3 percent).

Source: Zepol

   When looking at U.S. ports of arrival for Topocean shipments, Long Beach and Los Angeles are clearly the most important gateways. More than 62 percent of Topocean cargo arrived in those two ports, with New York/New Jersey a distant third at 9.6 percent. Oakland and Seattle, each with 6.5 percent, and Savannah, at 4.8 percent were the next biggest destination ports.
   In terms of which liner carriers Topocean used in the past 12 months, Maersk Line was a clear favorite. The Danish line handled 39,196 TEUs for Topocean, 30.4 percent of its total U.S. inbound volume and nearly double that of the second most used carrier, Mediterranean Shipping Co., which handled 21,012 TEUs in that period.
   OOCL was the third biggest carrier for Topocean, at 9.5 percent, with COSCO Container Lines fourth, at 6.6 percent, and Horizon Lines, at 5.3 percent.
   The use of Horizon is significant in that the U.S.-based carriers stopped providing eastbound transpacific service in December. Prior to that Horizon had become Topocean’s second most preferred carrier after Maersk. Topocean’s volume on Horizon from April through November (6,801 TEUs) represented 7.4 percent of the NVO’s total volume. What’s more  
   When looking at trends in the carriers used by Topocean, Horizon handled 13.8 percent of Topocean’s volume in October. Another smaller line that pulled out of the transpacific, TS Lines, handled 13.6 percent of Topocean’s volume in June 2011, before falling away.
   Clearly, Topocean was attempting to use smaller carriers on the transpacific to balance its portfolio before those carriers withdrew from the trade. Yet only COSCO seems to have benefited from the absence of Horizon and TS Lines with regards to Topocean volume. Maersk’s Topocean volume in March was down 39.5 percent from January, while MSC’s fell 35.1 percent. COSCO, on the other hand, handled more Topocean volume in March than it had in all but one of the preceding 11 months.

(Click to see full-sized charts.)