Tripartite Shippers’ Group urges dialogue in “post-conference world”
Tripartite Shippers’ Group urges dialogue in “post-conference world”
The Tripartite Shippers’ Group, comprising organizations representing shippers in North America, Europe and Asia, has called for “continued proactive dialogue” with the liner shipping industry following the European Commission’s December proposal to repeal EC Regulation 4056/86, which grants liner conferences an exemption to set common freight rates and cooperate on capacity.
The group held a meeting in Brussels last week to review progress on the elimination of the exemption for liner shipping for international trade to and from Europe.
“Shippers and their representatives have engaged with service providers in the air freight, road freight, rail freight and sea freight sectors on initiatives to tackle problems of the day and improve performance. This must continue,” said Nicolette van der Jagt, secretary general of the European Shippers’ Council.
“Clearly there are those in the liner shipping community that do not like what we are doing and will try and accuse us of refusing to talk about the future; but the future is about service performance and not liner shipping regulation or structures that seek to replace the conference structures with new ones,” van der Jagt said.
“This one subject — the removal of legislation that sanctions cartels in the liner shipping industry — is one of the most important issues for international trade logistics, not just in Europe, but around the globe,” said Peter Gatti, executive vice president of the U.S. National Industrial Transportation League.
“A market driven environment that is not compromised by pricing agreements among the carriers that belong to conferences has long been the desire and goal of shippers in every region of the world. The review of the liner exemption authority presents an extraordinary opportunity to achieve competitive and efficient services through true economic partnerships between individual suppliers and customers. European authorities and industry representatives must work together now to make this happen and set an example for how this can result elsewhere,” Gatti said.
“Many Asian shippers have very little protection from the liner conference monopolies,” said John Y Lu, of the Asian Shippers’ Council. “Removing the conferences will help re-establish a better balance that will prevent our governments from going down a regulatory approach to controlling the practices of liner shipping, and foster a new era of dialogue between shippers and shipping lines that will address the major performance issues facing Asian shippers and their trading partners in Europe and elsewhere,” Lu said.
“We are all very excited, however, about the future, with constructive dialogue between shippers’ organizations like the ESC and the carriers’ representatives that also have similar agenda to improve performance and working together,” van der Jagt said.
The Shippers’ Tripartite Group includes the NIT League; the Canadian Industrial Transportation Association; the ESC; the Japan Shippers’ Council and the Asian Shippers’ Council.