April 17 - According to a Drewry Shipping Consultants report, container shipping lines must act now to survive the crisis in the industry.
According to the new report 'Capacity Management - surviving the container crisis', while the past six months have seen a huge amount of capacity changes in the container shipping industry, which handles a significant proportion of project cargoes which aren't over-dimensional or overweight, freight rates continue to plummet while the industry avoids the painful decisions that are needed to ensure its collective survival.
The old analogy about "rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic" is in fact a good one for the crisis the liner industry finds itself in. "If we think of that grand liner as the market - proud, overconfident and heading towards a catastrophe partly of its own making - then we can see the operators desperately rearranging their fleets, while refusing to acknowledge the necessity of abandoning ship - or ships - before the crisis becomes a disaster," the report says.
The Drewry Report analyses how carriers have reacted to the global economic crisis and indicates what steps will need to be taken if they are to survive.
For more information about the report visit: http://www.drewry.co.uk/publications/view_publication.php?id=344#
