600,000 containers set to be online soon
Container shipping has reached a point of no return in terms of connectivity with analysts at Sea-Intelligence suggesting the majority of carriers will have installed the necessary hardware to take their boxes online by 2025.
Connected containers have taken a long time to gain traction but in the past couple of months there have been a slew of announcements that Sea-Intelligence reckoned in its latest weekly report will see more than 600,000 boxes going online with real-time tracking soon.
Maersk subsidiary Hamburg Süd’s reefer fleet is being equipped with online trackers. MSC, CMA CGM, and Maersk are each ordering 50,000 trackers for dry containers from Traxens, while Hapag-Lloyd has said it will equip its entire fleet of some 100,000 reefer containers with trackers from Globe Tracker, and intimated that some dry containers may be outfitted too.
Most recently, Israeli company Loginno announced during the Nor-Shipping exhibition outside Oslo earlier this month the winner of its Contopia competition. Loginno will be outfitting the full container fleet of Brazilian Log-In Logistica with live trackers free of charge.
“If this adds the value everyone believes will become the case, we are clearly past a point of no return, where competitive pressure will compel all carriers to eventually provide this feature as a matter of course,” Sea-Intelligence stated. Whereas in the past, connected boxes were seen as a competitive value-add, Sea-Intelligence predicted that will change soon into becoming a “qualifier to even be competitive”.
“…..soon to be a qualifier to be competitive” ……I believe it already is because shippers can track a UPS or Fedex on the web so why not their containers?
Actually, the reality is not so simple because the Lines are not giving all the information (especially about reefers) and the tracking is possible with owned/ financed boxes and Long term leases but what about short term leases? Will Lines fit a tracker and all the gubbins for a single voyage or a couple of round trips (with all the problems surrounding removal and recovery)?