Reporter Xu Hua

Combination and merge, where should we go?

The global containership liner market was plagued by“ceaseless wars” in 2014, with liner magnates combining and merging with each other. The pattern of big four of 2M, G6, CKYHE and O3 has gradually formed. Super alliance has become the must choice for the global carriers to reduce cost and enhance competitiveness. At the beginning of this year, only two of these 18 global carriers still work on their own- Hamburg Sud and ZIM.What choice will they make?

Strictly speaking, Hamburg Sud should not be classified as a global carrier. It performs poorly in Asia-Europe and transpacific lines. However, it has advantages in the Atlantic line, especially from Europe to South America.In 2014, it showed overly its will of control in its negotiation with Hapag-Lloyd, and as a stronger side,Hapag-Lloyd was unwilling to subdue. The negotiation failed due to the unwillingness of both sides to give in.Judging from its mighty character, even the German Hapag-Lloyd can not take command of it, not to mention its being taken by other companies. At present, it seems that Hamburg Sud and Hapag-Lloyd have common enterprise cultures. In 2015, both of Hamburg Sud and ZIM are likely to join G6.

E-Shipping business, silly? costly?

In 2014, E-shipping business developed rapidly. COSCO,CSCL and SINO have benefited from their background sources to a certain extent and have taken the lead in the race. These three “China prefix” E-shipping businesses are doing well on different platforms and have their respective characteristics. All kinds of services have been developed in depth and breadth, however, they still can not step out of their own circles. This limitation makes it hard for them to break the pattern of “online store selling their own products directly”, and making it far away from being real E-business. E-shipping business should not only take full advantage of existing resources, but also get rid of the traditional model without focusing only on shipping space selling, door-to-door and financial valueadded services should also be developed. At the same time of fast development of E-shipping business in 2015,the background which brings them resources begins to show restraints.

Looking ahead to 2015, E-shipping business will develop rapidly in depth and breadth, the full logistics service including but not limited to selling shipping spaces will become more “plump”. There will be more and more concrete cases of freight and other financial value-added services. It is not difficult to foresee that entrepreneurial internet companies may get new opportunities; more people may get venture investments and be on fast traffic lane. Freight subsidy and even subsidy competition between platforms may gradually emerge.

Intelligent ships, see you in the future.

With the use of logistics internet, cloud computing,big data and some other technology, the industry is undergoing a new industrial revolution which sees development from automation to intelligence and the deep integration of information technology and manufacturing industry. German firstly called this the fourth industrial revolution, “industry 4.0”, after the three revolutions of mechanization, electrics and automation and electronic computerization. This new industrial revolution is characterized by big data being the basis, and prediction technology as the core of intelligent manufacturing, the objective is to improve quality and efficiency of production and industrial chain operation, promote the realization of transformation of traditional manufacturing industry and to raise it to the level of national strategy in order to drive the second leap of industrial productive force. In this age, intelligent application of information technology is pushing industry transformation and upgrade. It can be predicted that whoever integrates and makes innovation on information technology and applies to the new products, he will be the leader of the industry.

Different fields give different definitions for intelligent ships. However, ship intelligence should be a gradual process. The first step is to upgrade the intelligence of onboard system to the intelligence of the whole ship,which will take a long time. However, the technical reform of ships with higher safety, environmental performance and efficiency as the objective, especially with the arrival of the era of intelligence of ships, the development of shipping industry will surely be promoted to a new level.