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© Kanison Charicha

Carriers and shippers with ambitions to be integrators looking to “take the forwarder out” of supply chains, may not be the right solution for intermodal transport, delegates at last week’s World Cargo Summit in Bruges heard. 

Philippe Beaujean, international business development advisor at the port of Antwerp-Bruges, identified what he called “a big problem” in multimodal shipping – the lack of integration between stakeholders across different modes. 

“What we see now is a lot of vertical integration within the supply chain, and everybody thinks that it will be the key thing to be the kingpin of the entire supply chain. 

“If I look at our customers, the shipping lines, a carrier like MSC is doing a very good job by running its own trains and its own barges, and also has its own airplanes now. Maersk and CMA CGM all have airplanes now,” said Mr Beaujean.  

But carriers seeking to “take the forwarder out and have everything on carrier haulage” is not necessarily the right solution for multimodal transport, he warned.  

Peter Roberts, freight commercial strategy director at Eurotunnel, elaborated: “Where everyone lines up their data, their collaboration and their approach to create a seamless flow, it’s very, very straightforward. What becomes harder is when people are trying to do a new thing.”

Mr Beaujean urged: “When you want good multimodal solutions, you need big streams of goods coming together. And now [carriers] will only limit this to their goods and they will not allow their competitors to be on there.” 

But it is not only carriers undertaking vertical integration initiatives, terminal operators and shippers had plans, delegates heard.

“DP World is buying a lot of assets, DSV is doing exactly the same. And some of the shippers are so big they also think ‘we can do it on our own’,” said Mr Beaujean.

He pointed to Chinese car manufacturer BYD, which had placed firm orders for two 7,000-unit pure car and truck carriers with Guangzhou Shipyard, expected to be delivered this year, each costing $90m to $93m.  The Loadstar has reported that BYD may order up to eight. 

“So, it’s now not clear for us who will be our customer in 10 to 20 years,” he added.  

But despite ocean carriers eyeing a larger portion of the market, Mr Roberts added that “the airlines are doing a really, really good job” of collaboration across modes. 

“They work with their boarders to put together an end-to-end solution that might connect UK via Frankfurt, for example… They will arrange the truck and seamlessly integrate it into their system… The truck arrives and is integrated with our systems so that the airline can track the position of the truck… they feed that information back to their forwarder and, ultimately, the shipper,” he explained.  

However, he believes there are still many untapped opportunities to boost multimodal success. 

“I think government bodies and agencies can support the growth of multimodal. There’s rail infrastructure inside Europe underutilised for freight, we’ll see if that level of sustained pressure will be taken in the next four years.  

“Airlines are doing a good job, I think ports are doing a good job, and people want this to work, but it does require collaboration,” Mr Roberts concluded.  

 

If you’re looking for a round-up of last week’s supply chain news, listen to the latest News in Brief podcast:

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