News / SME forwarders shouldn't fear carrier moves, but watch out for 'Amazonisation'

Photo: © Alexey Novikov

Carrier efforts to break into forwarding should not leave SMEs concerned about a loss of access to capacity, said Ti founder John Manners-Bell this week.

He was discussing the impact of moves by the likes of MSC, following its acquisition of Clasquin, and CMA CGM, which added Bolloré to the group in April and Ceva back in 2019.

“As far as small and medium-sized forwarders go, I do not see any real need for concern over carriers looking to build out their forwarding capabilities,” he told The Loadstar.

“What the shipping lines are seeking is a cradle-to-grave supply chain solution; but it is important to state that this is a solution they are seeking for their bigger customers, part of what they see as being a value-added service.”

Sources within the CMA CGM group have warned in the past that forwarders should be wary. One source told The Loadstar in November, before the Bolloré deal was finalised, that while Ceva had told other carriers it had a policy of giving no more than 20% of its volumes to CMA on any particular trade, “this was false”.

And the source claimed that, more worryingly, CMA CGM may share contract data from other forwarders using its services with Ceva.

But Mr Manners-Bell said such claims had not left him overly concerned about a threat to the SME forwarding community, and he believed the acquisition of forwarding outlets was “not a way of going into the smaller marketplace”.

He said: “I don’t really believe SME access to shipping lines will be compromised by carriers buying forwarders, because this is not the rationale behind these acquisitions.”

Rather, he warned, forwarders needed to be paying closer attention to what he saw as the “Amazonisation” of the sector, citing growing expectations – particularly among SME shippers – of full visibility.

“Shippers have gotten used to the market Amazon created; this means wanting similar levels of visibility and timeliness to that they get in day-to-day life,” Mr Manners-Bell explained.

“SME forwarders are beginning to leverage these needs, but for those that have yet to do so, what is necessary is for them to be building up systems that can provide data delivery and timing updates, the sort of thing the Amazon shopper has grown used to.”