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China Sea Rates: New Silk Road plans threaten liner industry

Caringbah: China’s plans to build more and more land links with Europe could seriously harm shipping lines in five years’ time, warns the ceo of Australian firm China Sea Rates today.

Tim Routh, who heads up the online freight rate pricing system, says that after reviewing China’s much talked about ‘New Silk Road’ plans if the People’s Republic can get the land route from Xian in central China through to Europe in play by 2020 then there will be a serious disruption to shipping worldwide.

“China will have the ability to transport goods through major European countries without having to use a single vessel, instead by rail or road,” Routh warns. “This would then double the over service and overcapacity issues we have today. Transit times would be far less for land than sea. With more shipping lines acquiring and ordering large capacity vessels it will be a matter of fleet management and capacity.

“This will directly affect pricing modules and we will be looking to adapt and exploit this in any future version of our solution. Pricing of shipping based on capacity, not market.”

China Sea Rates has been marketing heavily its new updated freight rate calculator.

“The focus now for ecommerce in China,” explains Routh, “is being able to market and sell direct to the consumer globally. Our LCL/LTL calculator delivers this. The shift is from traditional containerized B2B business to consolidated freight which is operating on a B2C basis, or from containerised seller to buyer to consolidated container with many sellers and buyers.”

Routh claims his is the first company to have an online LCL/LTL calculator from China to the most popular world destinations.

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