The international shipping industry has changed a lot in recent years, including changes driven by mergers and acquisitions, as well as the impact of Internet technology applications. Since 2014, when the organization began to focus on investing in the international maritime logistics field, many entrepreneurial enterprises have cultivated in this field, which has brought many real changes to the industry. These changes mainly include the following aspects:
The merger of shipping companies kept coming one after another, leading to the increasing scale of the head shipping companies and the concentration of transportation capacity. Representatives include the merger of COSCO and CNOOC, the acquisition of Hamburg South America by Maersk, and the merger of three Japanese shipping companies into ONE. As the most important upstream supplier of the logistics chain, the trend of concentration will also have some impact on the Internet logistics platform model.
The emergence of multiple freight rate platforms has reduced the number of flying orders that were originally based on information asymmetry, rapidly compressed the offline supply chain hierarchy, and also lost the foundation of the online trading model that was originally driven by the deletion of hierarchy to bring low freight rates to end customers. The experience of many B2B industries shows that the online transaction mode must at least bring 20-30% advantages over the offline transaction mode in terms of cost or efficiency, otherwise it is difficult to promote. The international maritime logistics industry also needs to explore another feasible model.
The integration, integration and openness of basic information in the industry have been rapidly improved. In March last year, Shanghai Port integrated the cargo information of Shanghai Port and opened it to the public; The information integration of Ningbo Port is 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 docks and large shipping companies plays an important role in promoting the transparency, standardization and efficiency improvement of the entire industry.
The rapid growth of human cost and the recruitment difficulties highlighted in the past two years have made the industry pay more attention to systematization and upstream and downstream connectivity. Just like Foxconn's large-scale promotion of automation to replace the high reliance on manpower, the international maritime logistics industry will also face dramatic changes brought about by systematization and intelligence in the future.