The international shipping industry has undergone significant changes in recent years, including changes driven by mergers and acquisitions within the industry, as well as the impact of Internet technology applications. Since 2014, when institutions began to focus on investing in the field of international maritime logistics, many entrepreneurial enterprises have worked in this field, bringing tangible changes to the industry. These changes mainly include the following aspects:
Mergers of shipping companies have been occurring one after another, leading to the increasing scale and concentrated transportation capacity of the leading shipping companies. Representative examples 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 in the logistics chain, the trend of concentration of shipping companies will also have some impact on the Internet logistics platform model.
The emergence of multiple freight platforms has reduced the number of flight orders that originally existed due to information asymmetry, rapidly compressing the offline supply chain hierarchy, and also losing the foundation of the online trading model that originally relied on deleting tiers to bring low freight rates to end customers. The experience of many B2B industries has shown that online trading models must at least bring 20-30% advantages over offline trading models in terms of cost or efficiency, otherwise it is difficult to promote. The international maritime logistics industry also needs to explore other feasible models.
The integration, integration, and openness of basic information in the industry have rapidly improved. In March of last year, the Shanghai Port integrated its cargo information and opened it to the public; The information integration of Ningbo Port is earlier than that of Shanghai; Nationwide truck positioning information was also integrated early last year. The openness of business information of industry leaders such as docks and large shipping companies plays a crucial role in promoting transparency, standardization, and efficiency improvement of the entire industry.
The rapid growth of labor costs and the recruitment difficulties highlighted in the past two years have led to an increasing emphasis on systematization and upstream and downstream connectivity in the industry. Just like Foxconn's large-scale promotion of automation to replace a high reliance on manpower, the international maritime logistics industry will also face drastic changes brought about by systematization and intelligence in the future.
