The international shipping industry has undergone a lot of changes in recent years. There are internal-driven changes brought about by mergers and acquisitions, and there are also impacts brought about by the application of Internet technology. Since 2014, the institution has focused on investing in the field of international shipping and logistics, and many start-ups have been working in this field, bringing substantial changes to the industry. These changes mainly include the following aspects:
The merger of shipping companies one after another has led to the increasing scale of the leading shipping companies and the concentration of shipping capacity. Representative examples include the merger of COSCO and China Shipping, the acquisition of Hamburg Süd by Maersk, and the merger of three Japanese shipping companies into ONE. As the most important upstream supplier of the logistics chain, shipping companies will also have some impact on the Internet logistics platform model due to the trend of concentration.
The emergence of multiple freight rate platforms has reduced the number of flight orders that originally existed due to information asymmetry, quickly compressing the offline supply chain level, and also made the line that originally rely on the deletion of levels to bring low freight rates to end customers as the main driving force. The above trading model has lost its foundation. The experience of many B2B industries shows that the online transaction mode must bring at least a 20-30% advantage over the offline transaction mode in terms of cost or efficiency, otherwise it will be difficult to promote. The international maritime logistics industry also needs to explore another feasible model.
The industry's basic information integration, integration and openness are rapidly improving. Shanghai Port integrated the cargo information of Shanghai Port in March last year and opened it to the public; the information integration of Ningbo Port was earlier than that of Shanghai; the nationwide truck positioning information was also integrated at the beginning of last year. The opening of business information of industry leaders such as terminals and large shipping companies plays a pivotal role in promoting the transparency, standardization and efficiency improvement of the entire industry.
The rapid increase in labor costs and the difficulty in recruiting highlighted in the past two years have made the industry pay more and more attention to systematization and upstream and downstream interconnection. Just like Foxconn's large-scale promotion of automation to replace its high dependence on manpower, the international maritime logistics industry will also face drastic changes brought about by systematization and intelligence in the future.
