Ingeniería de la solución

The history of liner shipping conferences goes back about 130 years (see, e.g.

Wang and Zeng, 1997) since the first conference was set up in 1875. In an attempt to protect carriers in the conferences from the new steam ships serving trades to India and the Far East, the traditional liner shipping com-panies established cartels to control the important trades between these regions. Under the liner conferences system, which has long been an estab-lished feature of the shipping industry, a group of shipowners of one or several nationalities serve a group of ports on a given route (Branch, 1982). When there were around 150 liner shipping conferences covering all trading routes around the world, the principle of protecting members in the conferences from new competitors remained. Despite opposition from the shippers exemption was granted from competition rules under the Treaty of Rome based on which the conference system yielded the benefits for their customers.

From the late 1980s liner shipping conferences were no longer fully respon-sive to customers’ needs (Yoshida et al., 2001) (referring to, e.g. agility in supply-chain management and cost reductions) due to the following factors:

barriers to trade freedom; inflation on shipping prices; threats of shipping services; and monopolization in price fixing. The liner carriers were trying to meet customers’ needs by designing logistics solutions. From a shipper’s point of view conferences and the legal protection were seen as antiquated impedi-ments to rational business governed by market forces. Furthermore, the industry suffered from overcapacity on many major lanes. At the beginning of the 1990s, new kinds of vessel sharing arrangements were driven by over-capacity and customer service. It was a less risky way of entering new lanes, increasing the number of sailings and providing a wider range of services while reducing overcapacity. At that time, freight forwarders and ocean liner confer-ences were the ones most affected by vessel sharing arrangements: the more capacity in line with demand, the less need for conferences.

Strategic alliances in the liner shipping area have grown so dramatically in recent years that they have received a great deal of attention from researchers.

For instance, the liner fleet planning and scheduling problem was treated by Xie et al. (2000). A more comprehensive literature review is provided by

Christiansen et al. (2004). Ryoo and Thanopoulou (1999) suggest liner alli-ances in the globalization era as an important strategic tool and Song and Panayides (2002) regard members of alliances as game players from a game theoretic point of view. The definition of alliances in a broader context, however, is not as uniform as it is in the area of liner shipping. A liner shipping strategic alliance is a group of liners with a specific agreement to share vessel space and improve service efficiency. Consortia represent operational, techni-cal or commercial agreements between different sea carriers to pool some or all of their activities on particular trade routes (PC, 2004). However, ‘‘alli-ances represent agreements between carriers to cooperate on a global basis’’

(Czerny and Mitusch, 2005). That is, the scope and extent of those two kinds of cooperations are different.

Over time alliances between ocean carriers were nothing new by 1995.

What had accelerated in the early 1990s was an expansion of those alliances to cover almost all major trade lanes. Although the number of such pacts was small, they involved some of the world’s most dominant container ship opera-tors. The goal of alliances is to become more efficient with lower cost. On the one hand, liner carriers are prepared to accept and implement new arrange-ments, which would reduce their operational costs and provide service offer-ings at a small extra cost. On the other hand, shippers welcome benefits like the increased sailing frequency.

The name of alliances Members

Grand Alliance Hapag-Lloyd, NYK Line, NOL, P&O Global Alliance MOL, Nedlloyd, OOCL, APL(NOL), MISC

CKY COSCO, K-Line, YangMing

United Alliance Hanjin, DSR-Senator, Cho Yang Maersk Sealand

Evergreen

Table 2: Liner Shipping Alliances in 1995–1996

(Source: from www.snet.com.cn)

Table 2 shows the original position of liner shipping alliances around 1995–1996. P&O and Nedlloyd merged in January 1997 while APL merged with NOL in November 1997 which showed the combined membership from different alliances (Grand Alliance and Global Alliance). That is, the member-ship of liner alliances changed as well as their names. For instance, since 1998 the Global Alliance has been called ‘‘The New World Alliance’’ (TNWA).

The name of alliances Members

Grand Alliance Hapag-Lloyd, NYK Line, P&O Nedlloyd, MISC, OOCL

TNWA MOL, APL, HMM

CKYH COSCO, K-Line, YangMing, Hanjin

United Alliance Hanjin, DSR-Senator, Cho Yang Maersk Sealand

Evergreen

Table 3: Liner Shipping Alliances in 1998–2001

Table 3 presents the relatively stable position of liner shipping alliances around 1998–2001. The Grand Alliance, consisting of Hapag-Lloyd, NYK Line, Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL) and P&O Nedlloyd, has merged its services with those of CP Ships-owned carriers Lykes Lines and TMM Lines. Similarly, between Maersk Sealand and TNWA carriers like APL, Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM) and Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL) combined their transatlantic services in 2000.

Approximately three to five years later, the liner shipping market reshuffled to a great extent. Maersk Sealand announced that it had annexed P&O Nedlloyd, ranked third in May 2005. Meanwhile, China Shipping Container Line (CSCL), ranked eighth in terms of capacity in April 2005, acquired Canada Pacific ranked seventeenth at that time. However, Canada Pacific was finally bought by Hapag-Lloyd in August 2005 (Brent, 2005). These business activities show some turbulence and the resulting situation can be summarized in Table 4. On the one hand, the alliances or mergers between large carriers lead to a further concentration of vessel capacity on the long trade lanes. On the other hand, the increased monopoly power of major carriers would lead to large and sustained slots surplus.

The name of alliances Members

Grand Alliance Hapag-Lloyd, CP, NYK Line, MISC, OOCL

TNWA MOL, APL, HMM

CKYH COSCO, K-Line, YangMing, Hanjin

Maersk Sealand P&O Nedlloyd Evergreen

Table 4: Situation from the End of Year 2005–2007

(Sources: Compiled from www.snet.com.cn and Brent, 2005)

Tables 2–4 can be summarized in Figure 1. We see that members of alliances are not fixed. For example, Nedlloyd originally belonged to the Global Alliance, in about 1998 switched to the Grand Alliance and then in 2005 was purchased by Maersk Sealand. Note that Evergreen, as an inde-pendent carrier, has maintained its independence from the main alliance groupings for decades since its establishment (Slack et al., 2002).

Figure 1: The Changing Membership in the Linear Shipping Industry

2.3 Motivations for Strategic Liner Shipping Alliances Members to