www.daygard.com www.f j-online.com


LCL HAZARDOUS CONSOLIDATION EX CHINA for more details see page 17


The unsung heroes of the global freight industry


Maximising the number of consignments in every container is the best way of cutting carbon emissions, as well as shipping costs. Little known to those outside the industry, consolidators and NVOCCs generally conduct their business well away from the public gaze.


Getting it all together - consolidators and NVOCCs


An often overlooked part of the international supply chain is the seafreight consolidator, or NVOCC (non-vessel operating container carrier) as they are sometimes known. There are different variations


on the theme, but essentially their job is to consolidate together smaller loads – less- than-containerload or LCL shipments - moving between the same two places and fill a complete shipping container. They reduce the amount ‘fresh air’ shipped around


of


the world in containers, lower costs for shippers and, very importantly in these environmental ly-conscious times, cut the amount of carbon emissions and pollution involved in global container shipping. Various entities offer


consolidation services. Sometime, forwarders


will


make up consolidated boxes to or from specific destinations as part of their overall offer to shippers. The shipping lines themselves might offer


a consolidation themselves, although


service this


is less common now as the process is labour-intensive and needs specific infrastructure. But the bulk of the global consolidated trade is in the hands of specialist companies who offer the service on a wholesale basis to freight forwarders. ECU Worldwide comes into


the latter category. Owned by India’s Avashya Group – which trades under the name Allcargo Logistics – but with its global operational headquarters in Antwerp, Belgium, it has UK offices in Southampton, Basildon and Manchester, loads export cargo out of 11 UK warehouses and receives inbound cargo at the ports of Southampton


and London


Gateway. It offers 69 services from


the UK, covering all the main trading areas of the world including the Far and Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent and the Americas, offered to the trade on a wholesale basis.


Import services into the UK are concentrated mainly on the market from Asia. Ian Mccarthy, director of


ECU Worldwide UK explains: “We move anything that is too small to justify using a complete container for. It could be a single pallet, or a few steel pipes. The objective is to fill the space in


the container.”


ECU, he believes, is the largest consolidator in the UK market. Naturally, the majority of are offered on the


services


major trading lanes such as China – where frequencies can be up to four a week - or the US, but there are some smaller markets such as Ecuador, Algeria or Libya, where a service might be offered every two weeks or so. A few still smaller markets might be served on an inducement basis, with the box departing when it has been filled (customers are of course appraised of this). Some other small markets, such as Francophone West Africa may


be served by moving cargo to ECU’s Antwerp


hub and combining it with Continent-origin traffic. ECU also sometimes hubs cargoes at destination – for example, cargo for Bahrain is transferred in Dubai. However, the vast majority of


traffic moving between ECU’s 1,000 or so port pairs traffic moves on the regular, direct services. Being a successful


consolidator is a rather chicken-and-egg situation. You need sufficient volume to offer a frequent service but without an attractive service it can be hard to attract sufficient volume. Nevertheless, says Mccarthy, the range of direct ECU services direct from the UK is surprisingly diverse. He explains: “In fact, it’s the smaller countries that are our big strength. Everyone does Shanghai, or New York; not everyone does Ecuador or Libya.” The services to the less


frequented places are often used by the big multinational forwarders (who offer their


own consolidations to the more popular destinations) and are ECU’s unique selling point, as it operates


as a completely


neutral entity – akin to a shipping line. As might be gathered, there


is a fair amount of competition in the seafreight consolidation space. As well as forwarders with their own consolidations, there are other major dedicated consolidators like


and Globelink-Fallow, all of whom have their own global networks. There are also some smaller, more local operators such as Cardinal in the UK or Excel in the Mediterranean. Historically, the shipping


lines, particularly Hapag Lloyd, also offered their own consolidations, though these have tended to fade away as it requires a lot of specialist staff and infrastructure, says Mccarthy. It is possible that the lines like CMA-CGM with their recent acquisition of forwarder Ceva, could revive their interest in the consolidation market, but there are no signs


of it happening yet. Setting up a regular


consolidation service requires a lot of investment these days,


not just in physical Shipco


infrastructure such as warehouses and depots, but also in the sophisticated software needed to run the operation efficiently, Mccarthy continues. This can run into several million pounds. “We’ve invested in online


portals to book and track shipments, and I believe that we are far in advance of most of our competitors. The smaller independent


guys haven’t


got the capital to develop a comprehensive online tool like ours,” he says. It might


be


thought that


clever tech could also be some help with the daily ‘three dimensional jigsaw’ puzzle that consolidators must solve every day, in working out how to efficiently fit myriad pieces of differently shaped and sized cargo into a standard container. Such


software certainly exists, 16 >>


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24