‘Shipping lines need to focus on service differentiation’

CEO offers his insights as Safmarine celebrates 60 years
JOY ORLEK
IN AN industry where survival depends on a lot more than capacity, frequency and transit time, service differentiation is critical. And for Safmarine, which this week celebrates its 60th anniversary, that’s no different. “The product is essentially the same - it’s a ship, it’s a container, it’s a transit time, and that’s at a very high level. We try to put the emphasis on the customer interface and the difference is in how customers interact with our staff,” CEO Ivan Heesom-Green told FTW from Antwerp this week. That human interface is crucial in an industry where containerised traffic is expected to grow by 10% this year and where shipping processes have not kept pace with technical advances. “We’re building bigger, faster ships with more capacity, but the work procedures that follow the shipping process have not changed significantly,” says Heesom-Green. Citing the example of a Hyundai ship that caught fire off Oman recently, he says insurers were quoting in the region of well over 1000 separate bills of lading on a single vessel. These statistics underscore the importance of e-commerce in the future to ensure that processes keep pace with technical advances. “A large percentage of Safmarine business is already transacted via ecommerce and that will likely be 100% in the years ahead,” says Heesom-Green, “freeing up staff to concentrate on providing customers with shipping solutions.” Against the background of 10% growth, a more immediate concern for all lines is the ability of existing infrastructure to cope. “I believe we will see bottlenecks in the supply chain, mainly on the intermodal points, including the ports. “While certain geographic regions tend to invest a lot faster in building infrastructure – China for example invests with a long time horizon – there’s a lot of catch-up to do in the likes of the Indian subcontinent, Africa and South America. With volumes of 10 – 11 million teus more per year the challenge for the industry is to maintain good service levels in handling this growth, and Heesom-Green believes that this is where Safmarine’s customer-centric philosophy will make the difference as it enters the next decade.