Carriers invest in the US supply-chain.

The COVID crisis and the surge in imports into the United States have increased the revenues of maritime carriers and pushed some of them to invest in the supply chain, to “get closer to their customers”.

As claimed by Ulrik Sanders, managing director and senior partner of The Boston Copenhagen Advisory Group at the Transpacific Maritime Conference in Long Beach.
Sanders said this type of Carrier investment in supply chain activities “is not new,” and the acceleration of the trend is due to the increase in revenues from shipping carriers over the past two years. These investments include terminals, rail and road freight, e-commerce. The industry leaders are Maersk and Cosco.
Maersk currently operates 73 terminals with a handling of 40 million TEUs, internal terminals, cargo aircraft with Senator and Star Air, road freight transport with companies such as Pilot and B2C Europe. It has also made investments in logistics with LF Logistics and investments in digital logistics, e-commerce and investments in the last mile in land transport with Pilot and B2C Europe and Visible.
COSCO manages 35 terminals with a handling of 106 million TEUs. It operates inland terminals, rail freight with Logitren and Pearl, as well as investments in air transport, road transport and logistics.
MSC operates 54 terminals with a total of 45 million TEUs. It has increased its presence in internal terminals, rail transport with CP Rail, currently in negotiations for the acquisition of ITA together with Lufthansa for air transport, investments in road transport, logistics and digital logistics.
CMA / CGM manages 27 terminals with a total of 11 million TEU handled, has invested in maritime terminals, rail transport through Continental Rail, air transport with CMA / CGM Air Cargo, logistics and couriers such as CEVA Logistics and is investing in digital logistics and e-commerce.
Venture Capital firms are also shifting their business to supply-chain possibilities. There has been record deal activity with venture capital venture capital as the initiatives aim to address supply chain weaknesses. In the past year, there have been $ 34 billion in venture capital investments in supply-chain businesses, up 86% from $ 18 billion in 2020.
A few examples: The Project 44 platform raised $ 420 million, increasing the company’s value to $ 2.2 billion. Other cloud provider Assent raised $ 350 million, increasing the company’s value to over $ 1 billion.
The result is that the lines of transport and logistics systems through acquisitions by shipping carriers move to new territories to get closer to the BCOs.
Increasing investment in digitalisation has improved the transparency of the supply chain, as ports, shippers and carriers need to better track transport. This trend was also recognized by John Porcari, a correspondent from the Biden port administration, who said that the sharing of data between cargo handling companies and ports needs to be improved. More and more companies and ports are sharing data that allows for better planning.
An example of this growing trend is the Port of Long Beach which is creating the Supply Chain Information Highway, a digital infrastructure project “designed to free usable data across supply chain nodes and organizations responsible for moving containers through various transport systems. The goal is to offer a solution where authorized supply chain partners across the nation can gain secure access to data that will result in greater visibility in the delivery of goods.”

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