Opinion Piece: Brought to you by Lars Greiner, Associate Partner at HPC Hamburg Port Consulting GmbH.
This week, over 9 months after the explosion took place in Beirut, Combi Lift finally managed to evacuate the first 1000mts of rubble, namely 59 containers of hazardous waste on their vessel, the Amoenitas, now en route to Wilhelmshaven where the waste will be safely disposed of. Congratulations are very much in order to Heiko Felderhoff and his Combilift team for their superb efforts in this endeavour, not only has it been a patient and herculean task, but it also represents a major thinking shift that is overdue in the breakbulk and project shipping industry.
Traditionally the industry has drawn a line at the ship’s railing, with the mantra that it is a freight industry. I have long believed this is a flawed assumption, and that freight is in fact simply a commodity, with the real industry being a service industry offering specialised transport services.
Anyone who studies the history of shipping will know that shipping started as an adventure whereby several parties financed a captain to undertake an adventure with a vessel or a fleet of vessels, and the profits of that adventure were returned as profit. The Captain, and his crew(s) offered the service of shipping for a share in this.
Combilifts success proves that the concept of a joint adventure as a service is still valid today. They have gone way beyond purely freight, becoming intimately involved in setting up the whole process, contacting the disposal companies, bringing in special equipment and containers and arranging the whole process. They have provided an end-to-end service for the client, in this case, the country, and I believe in doing this they are showing the way forward for the industry for the future. Whether it is a high-profile emergency such as this, or a simple standard project shipment, the modern call is for the service level, and not just simply the freight. Shippers and cargo owners today know they can always negotiate freight rates down to the lowest possible level, and there are enough carriers out there competing, that on freight alone the prices will remain close to cost, the difference is in the service that the carries provide.
Gone forever are the days of serious and first-class owners simply placing a ship and loading the cargo, serious cargo owners want more, they want surety. Surety that their cargo will be safely handled, stowed and delivered on time. Modern technology allows them more access to options, selecting owners as well as tracking it and even monitoring the weather conditions it transits, Modern cargo owners want the whole service and most are willing to pay for this peace of mind, yet too many liners and brokers still too focused only on freight rates. The strange thing is that many have the further services or are actually willing to offer further services, yet these are seldom advertised or highlighted.
We read so often of how the ship owners and operators are struggling, yet the solution is there, right in front of them, lets move beyond freight and to what they have always offered even from the early days, the service of transport and logistics. Once we realise it is the service and not the freight that has value, I believe the industry can return to the important part of international trade where it should be.
