Quest for Quality 2020: Ocean Carriers

Even before the COVID-19 outbreak, the world had been going through a “synchronized slowdown” with lower GDP growth toward the end of 2019, alongside rising trade barriers that had a major impact on the container shipping market.

And now you can add the newly imposed IMO 2020 fuel standards along with greenhouse gas emissions reduction discussions, and the world’s ocean carriers are facing a list of fresh costs related to maintenance and insurance.

“Considerable cost pressure remains despite some of the trade war damage being offset by a reshuffling of manufacturing in Asia,” says Peter Sand, chief shipping analyst for the Baltic and International Maritime Council (BIMCO) in Copenhagen. “Adding to this pressure is bunker price volatility.”

Sands and the team at BIMCO believe that these rising costs along with the ongoing slowing of container volume growth could result in more cutthroat competition among the carriers for container volumes. “If carriers end up in a competition of undercutting each other, the probability of implementing bunker adjustment factors will certainly be decreased significantly,” says Sand.

And even through there are a slew of uncertain variables on the horizon for the world’s ocean carriers, one certainty is that the 11 carriers pulling away with 2020 Quest for Quality Awards have stood out to the readers of Logistics Management as purveyors of world-class service on the high seas.

This year, Seaboard Marine and Matson led the way, putting up nearly identical weighted scores, while the attribute category scores were fairly well balanced throughout. Matson put up top marks in On-time Performance (12.26); Seaboard scored tops in Value (11.16); Tote Marine scored a category leading 8.23 in Information Technology; Matson topped Customer Service with a 9.94; while Orient Overseas and Matson put up identical 8.94 scores in Equipment & Operations.