(13)--MaritimeEconomics航运经济与政策.pdf

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1、 13.1 INTRODUCTIONGeneral cargo accounts for about 60%of the value of goods shipped by sea,so itdeserves special attention.1Most of this cargo is transported by containerized liner services which provide fast,frequent and reliable transport for almost any cargo toalmost any foreign destination at a

2、predictable charge.Thus,a Californian wine grower selling 2,000 cases of wine to a UK wholesaler knows that he can ship the wine by a liner service;that the journey will take 1215 days,and he is quoted a through rate for the container.On this basis he can work out his profit and his cashflow and mak

3、e the necessary delivery arrangements with confidence.If the destination was not Europe,but Iceland,Kenya or India,the procedure would be much the same he could ship his wine on a regular service at a fixed tariff that mayincrease with inflation but will not go through the wild peaks and troughs enc

4、ounteredin the charter market.It is an important business for the world economy as well as theshipping industry.This chapter examines how the liner business operates.We start with a brief reviewof the evolution from cargo liners to containerized transport.This is followed by a discussion of the econ

5、omics of liner pricing and costs which are central to managing the business.We then look at the demand for liner services and supply in terms of ships and business organization.Finally,we examine the major liner routes,ports and terminals.Some of the technical terms used in the liner business are li

6、sted in the Glossary.The Transport ofGeneral CargoThe growing intricacy and variety of commerce is adding to the advantages which a large fleetof ships under one management derives from its power of delivering goods promptly,and with-out breech of responsibility,in many different ports;and as regard

7、s the vessels themselves timeis on the side of large ships.(Alfred Marshall,Principle of Economics,8th edition,1890)13 13.2 THE ORIGINS OF THE LINER SERVICELiners are a comparatively recent addition to the shipping business and we reviewedtheir development in Chapter 1.From the 1870s improving steam

8、ship technology madeit possible for shipowners to offer scheduled services.Until that time a few shipownerssuch as the Black Ball Line had tried to run regular services with sailing ships,but mostgeneral cargo was carried by tramp ships working from port to port.Developments in the commercial world

9、also made a contribution.Steamship agents became betterorganized,with branches at key trading points in the Far East.The banking services for day-to-day business were greatly improved and the extension of the telegraph to the Far East enabled trading houses in China to sell by telegraphic transfer i

10、n Londonand India.2Steamships created the supply,the new commercial systems stimulated demand andthe shipping community was quick to seize the opportunity.The opening of the SuezCanal in 1869 demonstrated the advantages of steamships,and when this was followedby a freight market boom in 18723 there

11、was a flood of orders for steamships to set upliner services on the prosperous Far East route.Once established,the network of linerservices grew rapidly into the comprehensive transport system which exists today.The cargo liner eraFor a century until the 1960s liner companies ran fleets of multi-dec

12、k vessels known ascargo liners,versatile ships with their own cargo-handling gear(see Figure 1.9).Shipping had not subdivided into the many specialist operations we discussed in theprevious two chapters and the liner services had to carry a mixture of manufactures,semi-manufactures,minor bulks and p

13、assengers.The trade routes were mainly betweenNorth America,the European countries and their colonies in Asia,Africa and SouthAmerica,and on many of these routes trade was unbalanced with an outward trade ofmanufactures and a home trade of minor bulks.Filling the ship was the main aim andship design

14、ers were preoccupied with building flexible vessels which could carry allsorts of cargo even the first oil tankers built at this time were designed to carry a general cargo backhaul.The multi-deck cargo liner,with its capacity to carry bothgeneral cargo and bulks,was the preferred choice.There was a

15、nother aspect of the system which gave it great flexibility.Because thecargo liners were similar in size,design and speed to the tweendeckers used by trampoperators,the fleets were to a large extent interchangeable.A tramp could become a liner,and a liner could at times become a tramp.3This allowed

16、liner companies tocharter tramps to supplement their own fleets.For example,tramps returning from theUK to the River Plate to load grain would often carry a general cargo backhaul.Linercompanies became charterers of tramp tonnage,4while tramp owners relied on the linerbusiness as a cushion against t

17、he cycles in the bulk market and often built ships with tween decks and good speeds,which would fit conveniently into liner companyschedules.Since the ships used in the bulk and liner markets were roughly the samesize,this system of risk management worked well for both parties.506TRANSPORT OF GENERA

18、L CARGOCHAPTER13 As trade grew in the twentieth century,the system was refined and developed.To improve productivity and widen their cargo base,liner companies built more sophis-ticated cargo liners,adding features such as tanks for vegetable oils,refrigerated holds,extensive cargo-handling gear,ro-

19、ro decks and much automated equipment.Theybecame increasingly complex and expensive.The Pointe Sans Souci class built in theearly 1970s by Compagnie Gnrale Maritime(CGM)for their Europe-Caribbean service illustrates the extremes to which liner companies would go in their search for amore cost-effect

20、ive cargo liner.These ships of 8,000 dwt were designed to carry cargothat had previously been carried by a mixed fleet of traditional liners and reefer ships.The forward holds were insulated to carry refrigerated cargoes,with collapsible container cell guides and electrical points for refrigerated c

21、ontainers.Doors for bananaconveyors were let into thetween decks in each hold and side doors allowed thetweendecks to be worked at the same time as the lower hold.Hatch covers were strengthenedto take containers,and a 35-ton crane enabled the ship to be fully self-sufficient withcontainer loads in t

22、he smaller ports of the West Indies.Holds aft of the bridge weredevoted to palletized or vehicle cargo on two decks,with access by a wide stern rampor a side door if the port did not have facilities for stern-to-quay loading.Below weretanks for carrying bulk rum.Although the cargo liner was flexible

23、,it was also labour-and capital-intensive.In the1950s labour became more expensive and the trading world changed in a way whichmade flexibility less important than productivity.As the colonies gained independencethe liner companies lost their privileged position in many of the core trades in which t

24、hecargo liners had been most effective.At the same time many of the minor bulk back-haul trades transferred to bulk carriers at rates the liners could not possibly match.Asthe bulk carrier fleet grew in size,the liner and bulk shipping industries grew apart.However,the most important change was in t

25、he pattern of trade.In the rapidly growingeconomy of the 1950s and 1960s,the real growth in trade was between the prosperousindustrial centres of Europe,North America and Japan.Shippers in these trades neededfast,reliable,secure transport and the shortcomings of cargo liners became increasinglyobvio

26、us.The cost,complexity and poor delivery performance of the cargo liner systembecame a major stumbling block.Shippers did not want to wait while their cargo madea leisurely progression round eight or ten ports,often arriving damaged,and shipown-ers found their expensive ships spending far too much t

27、ime sitting in port.For the liner companies,running cargo liners had become equally unrewarding.Expensive tailor made ships spent up to 50%of their time in port,which tied up capital and limited the scope for economies of scale because doubling a cargo linerscapacity almost doubled its port time.The

28、re was not a great deal managers or navalarchitects could do to alleviate the fundamental problems of packing 10,00015,000 tonsof general cargo into a ships hold.5By the 1960s the expense of the ships,the cargo-handling problems and the segregation of their cargo from the rest of the transportsystem

29、 had made the cargo liners technologically obsolete.This resulted in the completerestructuring of the shipping system which we discussed in Chapter 1(see Figure 1.10)during which the liner and tramp system was replaced by the four business segments ofbulk,specialized,containers and air freight.507OR

30、IGINS OF THE LINER SERVICE13.2CHAPTER13 The container system,19662005For the liner business the solution was to unitize general cargo using containers.Standardizing the cargo unit allowed liner companies to invest in mechanized systemsand equipment which would automate the transport process and rais

31、e productivity.Thewhole procedure was essentially an extension of the production line technology whichhad been applied so successfully in manufacturing industry and bulk trades such as ironore.The new system had three components.First,the product transported,generalcargo,was packed in standard units

32、 that could be handled across the whole transportoperation.Several other systems such as palletization and barges were considered,butcontainers were chosen by all the major operators.Second,investment was applied ateach stage to produce an integrated transport system with vehicles at each stage in t

33、hetransport chain built to handle the standardized units.On the sea leg the investment was in purpose-built cellular container ships.On land it required road and rail vehiclescapable of carrying containers efficiently.Finally,the third step was to invest in high-speed cargo-handling facilities to tr

34、ansfer the container between one part of thetransport system and another.Container terminals,inland distribution depots and container stuffingfacilities where part loads could be packed into containers all playeda part in this process.The deep sea containerization system we have today drew on the ex

35、perience thatalready existed in the USA where,by the mid-1960s,there was a box fleet of 54,000 units(see Table 13.1).6It was pioneered by a US businessman with no shipping experiencein the face of general scepticism from the liner industry.Malcolm McLean had spenthis life building up McLean Trucking

36、,a road transport company with a fleet of 1,700vehicles.In 1955 he sold it for$6 million and bought the Pan Atlantic Tanker Company,which owned several T2 tankers.7One of these tankers,the 10-year-old Poltero Hills(which McLean renamed the Ideal-X)had a deck built of spars over the piping and manifo

37、lds and McLean had it fitted to carry sixty 35-foot containers.On 26 April 1956508TRANSPORT OF GENERAL CARGOCHAPTER13Table 13.1 World container fleet,19602005Container boxContainer shipContainers(TEU)Year-endfleet(TEU)fleet(TEU capacity)Per slot1960*18,0001965*54,00016,0003.41970500,000140,5003.6197

38、51,300,000366,0003.619803,150,000727,6004.319854,850,0001,189,3844.119906,365,0001,765,8683.619959,715,0002,492,6493.9200014,850,0004,812,2863.1200528,486,0008,116,9003.5Sources:US Steel Commercial Research Division and CI Market Analysis,MTR(1976),Vol 6 Table 51,CRSL*estimate the Ideal-X loaded 58

39、containers in New Jersey,and sailed for Houston,the firstseaborne shipment of modern containers(although there are many earlier cases of cargobeing shipped in standard boxes).The boxes weathered the 3,000-mile journey and han-dling costs were 16 cents per ton,compared with$5.83 per tonne for break-b

40、ulk cargohandling so it was a commercial success.8A second tanker was converted and on 4 October,1957 the maiden voyage of the first fully cellular vessel the 226 TEUGateway City,from Newark to Miami was watched by a crowd of 400(including NewJersey governor Robert B.Meyner,who helicoptered to the p

41、ier to deliver an address)9.When it docked in Miami its cargo was delivered to the consignee within 90 minutes.The established liner companies remained sceptical.Even in 1963 Ocean Transportand Trading,the leading liner company of its day,was still doubtful about the newsystem,probably because initi

42、ally they approached it as a development of their existingcargo liner operations and from this perspective the economics looked less attractive.10But given dedicated container-ships,terminals,truck distribution networks and a fleetof boxes,the analysis looked very different,though it is easy to unde

43、rstand why such aradical change must have been unwelcome to companies with large fleets of cargoliners.Many other less radical systems were investigated,including palletization,inwhich cargo was shipped on standard pallets in pallet-friendly ships,and deep sea ro-ro services which allowed a wide var

44、iety of cargo to be loaded on fork-lift trucks.However,the economics did not work in practice and deep-sea ro-ros remained a nichebusiness(see Section 12.6 for a brief review of the trade today).However McLean pressed on,renaming his company Sea-Land and in April 1966 SSFairland,the first transatlan

45、tic container service,sailed from its newly constructed PortElizabeth terminal in New Jersey to McLeans new trailer terminal in Rotterdam.Thecargo arrived at its destination 4 weeks in advance of a conventional cargo liner service.The major European liner shipping companies were by this time busy se

46、tting up theirown container services.Because of the size of the investment in ships,terminals and ofcourse the containers,consortia were formed.For example,Overseas ContainersLimited(OCL),a joint venture between P&O,Ocean Transport and Trading,British andCommonwealth and Furness Withy,was formed in

47、1965 and its first container servicestarted on 6 March 1969.Subsequent events illustrate the corporate changes whichoccurred as the container industry grew over the next thirty years.In the early 1980sP&O gradually increased its share and in 1986 bought the remaining 53%to form P&OContainers Ltd(P&O

48、CL),which merged with Nedlloyd in 1996 to form P&O NedlloydN.V.Ten years later in 2005 this company and was bought by the A.P.Mller-MaerskGroup and incorporated into Maersk Line.Developing the container service infrastructureDeveloping a fleet of container-ships was a technical challenge because the

49、 structure,with its open hatches,was so different from the cargo liners shipyards were used tobuilding.One of the earliest European orders by OCL,was for six 1600 TEU EncounterBay class ships.They had open holds with cell guides so that the containers could beslotted in without clamping.Steel hatch

50、covers fitted flush and provided a platform on509ORIGINS OF THE LINER SERVICE13.2CHAPTER13 which containers could be stacked four high and clamped in place.Although the shipswere not big by the standards of tankers and bulk carriers,the open hold technology andcell guides were new and raised various