CONTAINERIZATION

WHAT IS CONTAINERIZATION


Containerization is a system of intermodal freight transport using intermodal containers (also called shipping containers and ISO containers) made of weathering steel. The containers have standardized dimensions. They can be loaded and unloaded, stacked, transported efficiently over long distances, and transferred from one mode of transport to another container ships, rail transport flatcars, and semi-trailer trucks without being opened. The handling system is completely mechanized so that all handling is done with cranes and special forklift trucks. All containers are numbered and tracked using computerized systems.

Containerization greatly reduced the expense of international trade and increased its speed, especially of consumer goods and commodities. It also dramatically changed the character of port cities worldwide. Prior to highly mechanized container transfers, crews of 20–22 longshoremen would pack individual cargoes into the hold of a ship. After containerization, large crews of longshoremen were no longer necessary at port facilities, and the profession changed drastically.

Meanwhile, the port facilities needed to support containerization changed. One effect was the decline of some ports and the rise of others. At the Port of San Francisco, the former piers used for loading and unloading were no longer required, but there was little room to build the vast holding lots needed for container transport. As a result, the Port of San Francisco virtually ceased to function as a major commercial port, but the neighboring port of Oakland emerged as the second largest on the US West Coast. A similar fate met the relation between the ports of Manhattan and New Jersey. In the United Kingdom, the Port of London and Port of Liverpool declined in importance. Meanwhile, Britain's Port of Felixstowe and Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands emerged as major ports. In general, inland ports on waterways incapable of deep-draft ship traffic also declined from containerization in favor of seaports. With intermodal containers, the job of sorting and packing containers could be performed far from the point of embarking.

CONTAINER LOADING

1.FULL CONTAINER LOAD

A full container load (FCL) is an ISO standard container that is loaded and unloaded under the risk and account of one shipper and only one consignee. In practice, it means that the whole container is intended for one consignee. FCL container shipment tends to have lower freight rates than an equivalent weight of cargo in bulk. FCL is intended to designate a container loaded to its allowable maximum weight or volume, but FCL in practice on ocean freight does not always mean a full payload or capacity.

2.LESS-THAN-CONTAINER LOAD

Less-than-container load (LCL) is a shipment that is not large enough to fill a standard cargo container. The abbreviation LCL formerly applied to "less than (railway) car load" for quantities of material from different shippers or for delivery to different destinations carried in a single railway car for efficiency. LCL freight was often sorted and redistributed into different railway cars at intermediate railway terminals en route to the final destination.

LCL is "a quantity of cargo less than that required for the application of a carload rate. A quantity of cargo less than that fills the visible or rated capacity of an inter-modal container."It can also be defined as "a consignment of cargo which is inefficient to fill a shipping container. It is grouped with other consignments for the same destination in a container at a container freight station".

OTHER USES FOR CONTAINERS

Shipping container architecture is the use of containers as the basis for housing and other functional buildings for people, either as temporary or permanent housing, and either as a main building or as a cabin or workshop. Containers can also be used as sheds or storage areas in industry and commerce.
Containers are also beginning to be used to house computer data centers, although these are normally specialized containers.

There is now a high demand for containers to be converted in the domestic market to serve specific purposes. As a result, a number of container-specific accessories have become available for a variety of applications, such as racking for archiving, lining/heating/lighting/powerpoints to create purpose-built secure offices, canteens and drying rooms, condensation control for furniture storage, and ramps for storage of heavier objects. Containers are also converted to provide equipment enclosures, pop-up cafes, exhibition stands, security huts, and more.
Public containerised transport is the concept, not yet implemented, of modifying motor vehicles to serve as personal containers in non-road passenger transport.

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Importance Of Freight Forwarders

Firm specializing in arranging storage and shipping of merchandise on behalf of its shippers. It usually provides a full range of services including: tracking inland transportation, preparation of shipping and export documents, warehousing, booking cargo space, negotiating freight charges, freight consolidation, cargo insurance, and filing of insurance claims. Freight forwarders usually ship under their own bills of lading or air waybills and their agents or associates at the destination provide document delivery, deconsolidation, and freight collection services also called forwarder.

Transshipment is an essential feature of modern container operations. Due to high operation costs, large container ships usually serve only a few so called ‘hub ports’. The carriage from such ports to regional ports is for most of the time sub-contracted by shipping lines to local operators of feeder vessels. At the hub ports the containers are transshipped from the mother vessel to feeder vessels or vice versa. Furthermore, as a result of modern technological developments, improved cargo handling facilities at port terminals, roll-on/roll-off ships, and the invention of standardized containers, which permit their integrated use on various modes of transportation, are frequently transferred to other means of transportation, truck, train, and airplane for inland carriage. Where cargo passes in transit through a country, the freight forwarder coordinates the transfer of the cargo from one transport vehicle to another. This involves booking space on a transshipment vessel, discharging, sorting, loading and distribution of the cargo to various consignees. Transshipment agents generally act as agent for the shipper/consignee or another freight forwarder. Within the context of multimodal transport the forwarder might also act as contracting carrier.

Then, freight forwarder may arrange for packing, warehousing and distribution of cargo. He keeps the goods in storage before export and subsequent to import whilst awaiting transportation or distribution. The freight forwarder can either operate his own warehouse and offer those ancillary services as principal to the shipper and other freight forwarders or function as an agent in procuring the service from independent contractors for his customers. The fact that the freight forwarder does not own the warehouse, does not automatically lead to the conclusion that he offers the service as agent. In providing multimodal services the freight forwarder might act as principal and then subcontract the physical performance. A contract of carriage can extend to storage services before and after discharge of the cargo awaiting custom clearance if so contemplated by the parties.

Freight forwarder also provides all necessary documentation for the import and export of goods having regard to legal and customs requirements and the terms of the sales contract. He performs this function as an agent of the customer. Also as agent of the shipper/consignee, the freight forwarder coordinates and effects payment of freight to the performing carrier and any local taxes, for example, government service tax on behalf of his customers to avoid delays.

Freight Forwarders are the communicating party to keep us aware of when specific shipments arrive to local terminals, and receive specific pickup information from them to coordinate the local. A good freight forwarder will constantly communicate the shipment location during transit, therefore giving the local transportation and customer an idea of when the freight will be available and when they can expect freight to be at a holding warehouse and available for the end user.

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THE URBAN TRANSIT CHALLENGES

Pickup and delivery terminal is one of the important transit places in the Logistics chain. This kind of terminal is normally situated in the middle of the urban area. With the high accessibility, the urban area had become the point of view for all the carriers. But, there are also many constraints that they need to face when they transit at this location.

One of the challenges is the regulation. As most of us already know, not all types of vehicles can move freely in urban area especially the truck which carries the freight load. There are regulations that had been stated by the government to all the vehicles in order to make sure that we will have the sustainable transportation system in our country. So, this has been one of the challenges that need to be faced by all the carriers when they transit in the urban area. With the complex documentation, all the carriers need to adapt with this situation.

Next is the congestion. In the urban area, there always the traffic congestion since there are many vehicles that moved on the road every day. This kind of problem will be the biggest challenges to the parties involved since this will affect the whole Logistics process. Just imaging, once there is the traffic congestion at the middle of the urban area where the transit terminal located, it will make the total transit time become more longer. This will automatically increase the lead time and customer waiting time. The inefficient process time will reduce the customer service level and at the same time affect our profit.

Last but not least is the safety challenge. When involve the safety, the urban area is the most critical location. This includes the safety of the vehicles and goods that they carried. The risk of loss and theft is very high at this area. When they transit at the urban location, the freight is exposed to the high risk as there are many cases which involve the losses of the cargo.

As a conclusion, the urban area is the only place where most of the carrier transit to complete the supply chain process. The area can be said as the intersection point of the carrier. But it also becomes the biggest challenges to the parties involves. So, they need to plan for their journey to ensure all the process are going smooth and served the best services to their customer.

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Intermodal Transportation

Intermodal transportation involves joint systems, point to point, and moving freight by using two or more modes of transportation. Usually, transportation modes include water, air, truck and railroad. Intermodal transportation positively influences the global economy by controlling the way the movement of the customer’s goods. Nevertheless, some factors need to be kept in consideration to avoid restricting the value of intermodal transportation.

Many freight forwarders favor intermodal transportation because of lower cost and increased security of the products being transported. Moreover, shippers can take advantage of lower rates, more predictable pricing, and the flexibility of loading and unloading goods in a dropped trailer environment, which reduces handling costs. Intermodal transportation is actually one of the top five trends impacting the transportation industry today. For the past couple of years, the transportation industry has been hit with driver shortages, increased demand, shrinking truck capacity and increased fuel prices. This is forcing shippers who would otherwise refrain from using multiple modes of transportation to rethink their logistic strategies.

The reasons intermodal transportation is gaining momentum include cost savings, environmental benefits, and highway safety results. Shippers can take advantage of lower rates, more predictable pricing, and the flexibility of loading and unloading goods in a drooped trailer environment, which reduces handling cost saving can greatly outweigh the speed by which shippers can move their goods via truck.

Intermodal transportation also provides shippers more access to equipment and standardized transit schedules. This translates into reliability, capacity and safety advantages. As companies move their fright to intermodal, they will also be able to reduces damage claims through containerization, streamline their reverse logistics and increase control of their supply chain management.

When looking at logistics strategies to deal with tightening truck capacity, company executives need to seriously look at how intermodal transportation can benefit their business. It provides significant cost savings, increased reliability, greater capacity, and offers substantial green and safety advantages.

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HANJIN SHIPPING COMPANY

History

            Hanjin Shipping Holdings Ltd was founded in 1949 at the South Korea as a global shipping and logistic company. Hanjin Shipping is Korea's largest and one of the world’s top ten container carriers that operates some 60 liner and tramper services around the globe transporting over 100 million tons of cargo annually. Its fleet consists of some 200 containerships, bulk and LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) carriers. Hanjin Shipping, an operating company of Hanjin Shipping Holdings has its own ocean transportation, terminal operation, ship management, ship repair and third parties logistics serving various customers around the world. With 6,000 employees in 60 different countries and 230 branch offices, Hanjin Shipping is building its global logistics network, which is also supported by the company’s 13 dedicated terminals at the world’s major hub ports and 6 inland logistics bases.  In addition, Hanjin Shipping is trying to fulfil its duties as a corporate citizen by adopting eco-friendly container, developing CO2 emission calculator and establishing management system based on ethics and transparency of global standards. Hanjin Shipping Company has provided the service such as Freight forwarding and Contract logistics. In Freight forwarding, the Hanjin as an ocean forwarding by provides the transportation service for customer product and it also as an air forwarding by provides air carrier for the goods. It also has a multimodal service using sea and air and railway. This is the most efficient in terms of both lead time and logistic cost. Besides, Hanjin also provide service for the custom clearance by declaration services to Customs Authority for export or import. The expanded services for duty refund, duty pre-payment and inspection management. The consolidation concept also was practical by Hanjin in order to saving cost and transportation efficiency can be improved with order management and cross dock. From trucking services to value-added service, Hanjin logistics provides a wide range of contract logistics services. Hanjin first-class services offer not only basic transportation and storage services but also specialized value-added services. In their service such as container service, it transports approximately 3.7 million TEU containers a year. This service consists of 104 container ships which allows for this service to produce such an output per year. Recently, in 2010 the South Korean

 shipping company was the first to introduce a 10,000 TEU class carrier ship, which travels between Asia and Europe. They also transport in bulk quantity product.This division of the shipping company delivers a variety of resources and raw materials through its contract with other companies. The division's ships are LNG and VLCC ships which carry crude oil and chemicals. The shipping terminals for this company are distributed internationally. There are fourteen dockyards that this company owns: four in Korea, three in the United States of America, two in Japan, and the rest in Spain, Taiwan, Vietnam and Belgium. As the Third Party Logistics, Hanjin shipping and relative, Hanjin Logistics often conspires. Their teamwork allows the shipping division to provide logistics to third parties. Its logistics network includes 13 dedicated terminals in Long Beach, Antwerp, Kaohsiung, and Busan among others and six inland logistic bases in such locations as Shanghai,Qingdao, and Port Kelang. Hanjin Shipping is expanding its 3PL and more as part of its business diversification efforts.It also has serve the ship repair service.The ship repair yard is located at Shanghai’s Zhejiang Eastern Shipyard Co.,Ltd., which is an affiliate of Hanjin. All this give a benefit to the Hanjin Company to be a worldwide shipping company.So,it does not impossible to the Hanjin Company to achieve their vision for being the global leader shipping company.

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Tanker Carrying the ‘Dangerous Goods’!

Carrying goods by road transportation involves the risk of traffic accidents and many more. The more dangerous vehicle when involved in an accident is oil tanker. If the goods carried are dangerous, there is also the risk of an incident, such as spillage of the goods, leading to hazards such as fire, explosion, chemical burn and even environmental damage.

Most goods are not considered sufficiently dangerous to require special precautions during carriage. Some goods, however, have features which they are potentially considered dangerous if carried. But they must still need to make sure the delivery of goods in safe condition.

Dangerous goods involves liquid or solid substances and articles containing them, that have been tested and assessed against internationally-agreed criteria, a process called classification, and found to be potentially dangerous when carried. Dangerous goods are assigned to different classes depending on their predominant hazard.

There are regulations to deal with the carriage of dangerous goods, the purpose of which is to protect everyone either directly involved such as consignee or carriers, or who might become involved such as members of the emergency services and public. Regulations place duties upon everyone involved in the carriage of dangerous goods, to ensure that they know what they have to do to minimize the risk of incidents and guarantee an effective response.

Carriage of dangerous goods by road is regulated internationally by agreements and European Directives, with biennial updates of the directives take account of technological advances.

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OUR LOCAL AIR CARGO SERVICES (Transmile Air Services)

Transmile Air Services is a cargo airline with its head office in the Transmile Centre in the Cargo Complex of Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport inSubang, Selangor, Malaysia.

It is an express freight and freighter charter company. The airline was established in November 1993. It has courier transportation services between Peninsular Malaysia and East Malaysia and services international companies such as DHL Worldwide Express, United Parcel Service,among others. Transmile also provides aircraft charters and wet leases specialists with experience operating cargo flights around the world. Transmile Air was designated a National Cargo Carrier by the Malaysian Transport Ministry in 1996. Transmile is a corporation listed on Bursa Malaysia or (Malaysia Exchange).

  BRIEF HISTORY OF TRANSMILE AIR SERVICES

1. Transmile began with one Boeing 737 and one Cessna Grand Caravan in providing air express transport service to Pos Malaysia Berhad for their courier business to East Malaysia in November 1993. It later developed into an international company and the only dedicated intra-Asian overnight express cargo operator in Malaysia. Their first Boeing 727 freighter service commenced in 2000 for the Kuala Lumpur/Penang-Bangkok-Hong Kong courier sector. It was an extended operation for their existing client, DHL International Limited. Over five years, owing to the increasing demand of freight services in the region, Transmile increased their Boeing 727 fleet to 10. As part of the strategy to expand their operations and network of connecting routes, Transmile acquired four MD-11s in 2005. They started the MD-11 operation for Kuala Lumpur-Hong Kong-Los Angeles sector in the third quarter of 2005. Transmile Group Berhad largest shareholder is part of the diversified international conglomerate, the Kuok Group. The Kuok Group has a Hong Kong based company, Kerry Logistics Network Ltd, which has an extensive logistics business in Asia.                                                                                       
2. From 2002 to 2006, Transmile provided air cargo service to Air Macau. Their subsidiaries are K-Mile Air of Thailand and now-defunct Megantara Air of Indonesia.           
3. In May 2007, Transmile shares saw a massive selldown following the company's announcement on 7 May 2007 concerning the reliability of its unaudited consolidated results for the financial year ended 31 December 2006, resulting from the Company's auditors not able to satisfy themselves on the fairness or validity of certain transactions. Consequently, the company commissioned a special audit relating to the matter. The Securities Commission had charged three former executives of Transmile Bhd, including its founder, with giving misleading financial statements.There three are ex-chief financial officer Lo Chok Ping, ex-executive director Khiudin Mohd and founder Gan Boon Aun, who resigned as chief executive officer in June 2007.He quit after Transmile had lodged a police report over false statements and documents on revenue, property, plant and equipment and payments to third parties as reported by Moores Rowland Risk Management Sdn Bhd in a special audit.                                                                                    
4. On August 19, 2009, Malaysia Airlines announces that its aircraft maintenance unit is planning to acquire Transmile engineering unit to achieve a revenue target of MYR500 million ringgit (US$140.9 million) for 2009. The plan involves the purchase of Transmile's base maintenance and engineering capabilities including 2 hangars, equipment, and employment of its skilled manpower.

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