Helen Thanopoulou

Transhipment Port Selection and Decision-making behaviour: Analysing the Taiwanese Case

The study uses the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) technique to determine the importance of various criteria in the transhipment port selection decision-making process. The authors propose a set of transhipment port selection criteria from a container carriers perspective. Sourcing the data from an AHP survey in Taiwan, transhipment port selection is found, tenuously at this first stage of research, to depend mainly on port competitiveness as represented by the cost that carriers are faced with for loading and discharging of containers and on port efficiency as represented by the container loading and discharging rates. Fuzzy multiple criteria decision-making methodology (FMCDM) was applied to obtain evaluations of port alternatives and the relevant responses de-fuzzified to derive crisp values of port performance.

What price the flag? The terms of competitiveness in shipping

Abstract The recovery of the markets in the late 1980s proved to be insufficient in restoring the traditional western registries to anywhere near their levels before the long period of crisis triggered off in 1973. The recent downturn in the dry bulk sector has triggered again the discussion on the role of manning costs and the terms of registration of ships. Yet, as demonstrated by the different impact of the crisis of the 1970s and the 1980s on the various major fleets, the resilience of shipping companies is a much more complex issue. This article attempts to assess to what extent the prerequisites for being competitive in shipping exceed the simple — and simplistic — notion of low manning costs; reviewing the last developments in fleet registration, with a special focus on the Greek flag, It highlights further the different context in which business and policy decisions have to be taken nowadays by traditional maritime nations.

Korean liner shipping in the era of global alliances

In the course of the last two decades Korean shipping has emerged as a major player in the liner market. In 1970 there was not a single container ship in the Korean fleet; yet, within the next two decades, shipping companies from Korea have become included among the top 10 liner operators in the world, in the context of a spectacular ascent of Asian companies in international container shipping. During the same period the organization of liner shipping itself underwent major changes. In the 1970s and 1980s, pools and powerful consortia prevailed, maximizing frequency and optimizing fleet deployment under pressure from the high investment entailed by containerization. The era of consortia, however, came to a close in the early 1990s; intermodalism and the expansion of the major liner companies into forward and backward segments of the transport chain rendered them inflexible for pursuing individual strategies of product diversification with a view to larger market shares. Global alliances were finally born...

The growth of fleets registered in the newly-emerging maritime countries and maritime crises

This paper suggests the existence of a feedback relationship between the dynamic entrance of less-developed countries in shipping and the prolongation and deepening of maritime crises. The duration and extent of the transitional period of crisis depends also on the specific terms of the ‘succession’ procedure between fleets with different cost levels. During the last major maritime crisis, nations at a less advanced stage of development entered the maritime industry producing a service that had become—more or less—‘standardized’, following the Vernon product cycle more than all other cycles. The distribution of world tonnage among the different groups of countries underwent major changes as the effects of the economic crisis after 1973, which coincided with developments in the supply of tonnage, created favourable conditions for the rise of the lower cost fleets of developing countries, in a feedback relationship. The restoration of freight levels during the late 80s and early 90s, which was accompanied b...

Bulk reefer market economics in a product life cycle perspective

The paper analyses the market form of the bulk reefer segment and the industrys dynamics in a product life cycle perspective in view of the erosion of the formers market share from container shipping. The author discusses how reefer services’ advertising and product differentiation classify this specialized bulk shipping market in monopolistic competition. The analysis draws from empirical evidence of advertising from the maritime press of the last decades, market developments and observed company strategies, while the overall classification of bulk reefers in this market form is based on Chamberlins discussion of the traits that set this market structure apart. Reefer ship type and service developments are discussed next from a product-life cycle perspective pointing that the bulk sector of refrigerated transport has reached the declining end of its product life cycle curve. On that basis, a SWOT review points to few and bleak prospects for bulk reefer operators, which lay essentially outside the carriage of perishable produce in bulk; this, the analysis concludes, is in contrast to opportunities for further research for which this market segment provides ample opportunities.