Durban transhipment option designed to develop export trade from IOI TARGET THIS year for Mer Austral - sailing the SA-Indian Ocean islands route - is aggressively developing the export trade from the islands to foreign destinations, according to owners representative, Darren Lowe.
This he sees as a prime factor in easing the strain of a highly competitive sea trade, facing the extra disadvantage of being utterly imbalanced in trade volumes. Imports to the islands currently far exceed their exports, said Lowe, and leave us all facing the costly problem of the incoming run being mostly for empty boxes. Facilitating exports, and cutting down on the empty boxes, is the most practical way around the problem, he added. In a competitive trade you can't expect friendly help from the other lines, and a cut-throat price war is to nobody's advantage, said Lowe. Curing the imbalance is the best way out of this problem. To work this, Mer Austral has arranged a transhipment option through Durban for the islands shippers - with P&O/Nedlloyd, Safmarine and ALS having agreed to lift Mer Austral's boxes at the port, and to move them on to other destinations all around the world in their own networks of services.
I'd also like to see a stabilisation of rates, said Lowe. The problem here was that the islands trade volumes slumped at mid-year in 1997, new lines were moving in to the already competitive market, and rates dropped by as much as US$200 a box as the lines fought for volumes.
In the long-term, clients should look at service, back-up service, schedule integrity and vessel quality the measure, said Lowe, rather than shippers and importers looking to save a buck-or-two in the short-term.
