Congested ports, high shipping rates and chaotic shipping schedules have led many shippers who rely on containerized shipping to venture into the “overflow” market and experiment with moving their boxes on other non-container ships, or repackaging parts of their cargo and shipping them as groceries.
The shippers said they were in no rush to return to the container market, despite lower spot rates and signs of normalisation in some markets.
“Some products have to be shipped in containers to avoid damage, so it’s not possible to ship them in grocery bags or pallets,” said one executive, who asked not to be named. Working with chartering brokers who handle specialty cargoes, we now choose to ship containers on non-container ships twice a month and plan to do so for another 18 months.”
The average cost per box is about $7,500, the executive said, and that doesn’t include MULTI-purpose MPV demurrage fees, which average $35,000 a day, loading and unloading fees, trucking fees and other expenses that must be paid when it is transported on a non-container ship. In liner transport, cost includes charges other than demurrage.
Once again, the all-purpose “grocery delivery”
Fifteen or twenty years ago, we shipped everything in the form of groceries. Over the past 15 years, container shipping has completely replaced old-fashioned grocery shipping. In 2021 and early 2022, however, we’re back to grocery shipping, and shippers need to relearn some old-fashioned skills and how to manage them properly.
The executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: “While the company’s shipping mix is still dominated by containers, the company is now moving a small percentage of packaged and palletized cargo in a grocery vessel. “For the last 18 to 20 months, our focus has been on moving goods and meeting demand, not cost savings.”
In a normal market, container management is relatively simple. Each week, for example, containers are loaded and invoiced immediately after they are shipped, but bulk cargo must be collected four to six weeks before loading and cannot be invoiced until the ship sails.
The management of miscellaneous cargo after unloading is also much more complicated. After the miscellaneous cargo is unloaded, trucks and warehouses must be contacted to remove the cargo from the dock. “But a container is very convenient, it can be shipped from anywhere, factory or warehouse, it can be shipped to anywhere, it’s a little bit more convenient and flexible.”
However, shippers said, “There is value in more balanced shipments, the need to keep a certain percentage of shipments going grocery, in my opinion, 10 percent grocery shipments would make for better mobility.”
Shipper said: “If the packaging is right it will work well, the cargo will continue to flow, you won’t see weekly peaks in shipments, and you can use more strategies for emergency shipments. “
Other shippers are also considering alternatives. Whitney Luckett, co-owner and president of Simko North America, which imports about 1,000 containers of natural rubber a year from West Africa, says it is being hurt by high freight rates.
“There are very few options on the trade route,” Luckett said. “Spot prices have jumped from $800 to more than $4,000 per container, and the company is now in a wait-and-see mode to see if rates can come down. Since our goods are fragile, we do not use grocery packing, but shipping containers with grocery is an option if freight rates do not drop. “
Simko’s head of specialty chemicals logistics said: “A lot of container to the shipper now is very painful, the big American companies, including the world top 500 companies they were all very helpless, because lost the contact between the basic elements of the supply chain of the actual, trucks and chassis, railway, these are now outsourcing, the owner of the goods depend so much on freight forwarders and 3 PLS, they don’t know what to do, So we have to have more control over those things.”
“You have to focus on service first, you have to find the boat and the truck, and then you worry about the cost. Service comes first.”
The number of non-container ships handling containers rose sharply
The spillover was illustrated by a 58.6 percent jump in container imports by NON-container ships to 306,914 TEUS in 2021 from 2020, according to PIERS, a unit of S&P Global. The number of teUs handled by cargo vessels jumped 104% to 153,514 TEUs.
Pieces of cargo ships continue to snatch from the containerized industry and will not be coming back soon
U.S. container imports by non-container ships (including general cargo, unhatchable general cargo and general cargo vessels) rose 73.2% year-on-year to 172,918 TEUs in the first five months of 2022. The absolute volume of cargo vessels handled, including MPV, was the largest, rising 104% from the first five months of 2021 to 89,605 TEU. General cargo ships saw the largest increase by 509.2 percent.