Episodes of exclusive TPM content featuring interviews of key stakeholders and attendees.
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The must-attend conference for the trans-Pacific and global container shipping and logistics community
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A special, off-the-record discussion and preview of TPM25 and the issues dominating today's containerized ocean shipping industry. Don't miss this opportunity to hear from the senior JOC editorial team about the key issues to be discussed during the conference, and to convey what questions you'd like addressed before leaving Long Beach. Reserved Only For Shippers.
2024 began with many industry observers and stakeholders expecting a familiar brew of widening vessel capacity outpacing modest inventory restocking in North America and Europe, putting downward pressure on rates but lacking the volatility of the pandemic era. It didn’t turn out that way. Diversions prompted by Houthi rebel attacks reformulated the ship capacity equation by forcing longer sailings. Tariffs and labor threats, and inventory jitters pulled demand from Asia to North America and Europe earlier. The speed at which the container market turned in the spring of 2024 should give the industry pause. The decades of carrier consolidation, coupled with better information and more aggressive pricing efforts when the market is in carriers’ favor, is ultimately making ocean carriers more effective in controlling capacity. What that means in the face of new ship deliveries is unclear, and so, too, is the degree to which the reforming of two new alliance networks increases competition. On the micro level, trust between shippers and carriers is the lowest it's been in years. The lofty hopes of a breakthrough in shipper-carrier relations out of the ashes of pandemic-driven disruption have been dashed. Under higher inventory-carrying costs, shippers often feel a sharper bite from a lack of ocean reliability, while carriers argue that shaky volume forecasts and price bashing challenge their best efforts to deliver consistently. Both sides decry the lack of an enforceable contract. It’s against this backdrop that a diversity of voices — a carrier, forwarder, industry analyst and investment analyst — will weigh in at TPM25 on the blend of capacity, demand, and reliability for the next 18 months, while taking a clear-eyed view of the implications for shipper-carrier relations.
When the Gemini Cooperation was announced in January 2024 — an alliance based on a shuttle and hub port network on several trade lanes and a promise of industry-leading schedule reliability — it signaled a sharp departure from the status quo. Where high and consistent schedule reliability for shippers was but a distant pre-COVID memory, Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd promised a return to a golden era of reliability — greater than 90% on-time arrival across their network versus the industry average that was running in the low-50% range as of late October, according to consulting firm Sea-Intelligence. In an industry long used to direct services, Gemini challenged conventional wisdom in asserting that a hub-and-spoke network could produce the reliability many shippers need and expect. It supports both the Maersk integrated strategy and Hapag-Lloyd’s goal to be the No. 1 carrier for quality. To deliver on this goal, a great deal hangs on the performance of the hub ports — the Port of Tanjung Pelepas terminal in Malaysia avoids congestion by limiting the amount of cargo allowed on its yard, a policy that staved off congestion in 2024 and during COVID. But can the model work across the network? What are the risks and how will they be addressed? In this session, we will put a series of questions to Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen and APM Terminals' Lars Mikael Jensen, who oversees the hub ports within A.P. Moller-Maersk.