Concentration of container terminals and liner shipping

The international container transportation industry has seen some significant changes in terms of concentration of players, both in ocean transportation and in ports. Nowadays, one can observe three types of companies involved in international container transport: pure liner shipping companies, such as CMA CGM, pure container handling companies such as Hutchinson Port Holdings, and companies that combine these two activities, such as Maersk Lines. It is of interest to investigate to what extent these various companies are developing worldwide activities, and to what extent the concentration in shipping activities matches the concentration in terminal ownership. This paper proposes to calculate some well known concentration indicators for both liner shipping services and container terminals. These indicators allow a categorization of geographical coverage of companies. In addition to this, the paper adopts an approach to statistically test the equality of these concentration indices in a regression model framework. These tests would enable an analysis of the match between container terminal coverage and liner service coverage between and within companies. The paper concludes that there are significant differences between the scope of liner networks, and between the coverage of terminal networks. For the moment, there is not much support for the claim that fully integrated, worldwide, liner service and terminal networks are being developed. BIO: Dr. Francesco Parola started his studies in maritime and transport economics at the University of Genoa, in Italy, where he got his bachelor degree cum laude in early-2001. During his PhD studies he has been visiting researcher at the Center for Maritime Economics & Logistics of the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. He successfully defended a doctoral thesis about the strategies of transnational container terminal operators in the port reform era. His current research topics include liner shipping and port governance. Currently he is lecturer at the Faculty of Economics in Genoa and he is member of the Italian Centre of Excellence for Integrated Logistics. He is author and co-author of several papers and articles in specialized business reviews and international conference proceedings. More information: contact nzerhane@rsm.nl