Who's using Biffex? Results from a survey of shipowners

The continued survival of the Baltic International Freight Futures Exchange (Biffex) would certainly have come as a surprise to many critics that were present at its inauguration. In an effort to explain, at least partially, the reasons for its continued existence, this paper presents the results from a behavioural and attitudinal survey of shipowners. Through the analysis of the responses received, the paper attempts to evaluate the degree of success achieved by Biffex in providing shipowners with a powerful, flexible and viable mechanism for hedging their market risk. The results imply that there is great scope for improving the acceptability of the market amongst shipowners, particularly as a hedging tool. In the light of these results, the paper comments on potential future innovations within Biffex and suggests changes in marketing policy that might lead to an increased level of acceptance amongst shipowners. In conclusion, recommendations are made with respect to aspects of Biffex that are worthy of further investigation and analysis.     

Selective replacement of national by non-national seafarers in OECD countries and the employment function in the maritime sector

Commonly, in the shipping industry of the developed Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, national seafarers are progressively being replaced by non-national ones. The present paper aims to provide a model for this tendency. Our analysis is based on the assumption that when shipowners are called to make decisions concerning crew characteristics (such as crew composition and employment levels), they address themselves to two distinct seafarer markets: the domestic (seafarers from OECD countries, henceforth to be referred to as ‘national’) and the non-national (seafarers from other countries). Whilst workers of the first market are better examples in the field of ‘on-the-job-performance’ (in terms of efficiency and loyalty) than workers of the second, shipowners set their domestic employment rule with the view to maximize their profits facing wages and ‘on-the-job-performance’ from national and non-national seafarers alike. Thus, national seafarers are chiefly recruited as officers and the employment level of non-national seafarers are residual, formed thereafter. Our findings point out that the employment rule concerning nationals is negatively affected by the former's wages, and positively by the wage increases of non-national seafarers and by eventual increases of the differential between the ‘on the job performance’ of nationals and that of non-national seafarers of corresponding specialisation.     

船东履行《2006海事劳工公约》要点探讨

旨在提供海员体面工作条件的《2006海事劳工公约》已于2006年2月23日被国际劳工组织通过,该公约有可能在2011年底之前生效。作为该公约涉及的对象之一,船东公司需提前准备做好各项履约工作。综合考虑公约的内容和特点,结合大部分船东公司的管理实际,总结与履约相关的部分工作要点,可为船东的顺利履约提供参考。     

The use of flags of convenience by Latin American shipping

We are grateful to our Argentinian contemporary, the journal Consultor,for permission to publish the following article, consisting of extracts prepared and translated by Mrs Sheila Farrell from a recent series of papers^†by Dr Aurelio Gonzalez Climent. They discuss the varied reasons underlying the decision of some Latin American shipowners to register their vessels under flags of convenience. The article brings out the contrasts between the attitudes of these shipowners and their respective governments.     

大型散装船最大吃水的控制

针对大型散装船装货速度快的特点,提出在确保船舶安全的前提下,从制订航次装货计划、装货过程及装货最后阶段控制船舶最大吃水,为船舶所有人、租船人争取最大的利益。     

The influence of qualitative factors in Isle of Man ship registration decisions

Open registers have developed in recent years as an economic necessity allowing costs to be cut in response to an over-tonnaged marketplace where low to nonexistent profit margins were the norm under the registers of the traditional maritime nations. These open registers allow shipowners the flexibility to reduce their operating costs by, for example, employing cheap foreign crews. The majority of studies in this area have concentrated, quite rightly, on the economic reasons why shipowners flag-out to registers other than their home register. There are, however, a number of more nebulous reasons why shipowners choose one open register as opposed to another. This paper presents the results of a survey which attempts to deduce these qualitative influences over register choice. The specific context of the Isle of Man register is used to illustrate the importance of such factors.     

The choices of employing seafarers for the national shipowners in Taiwan: an empirical study

This paper focuses on the binary choice behavior of employing seafarers for the Taiwanese' national shipowners and embraces the empirical investigation based on the Binary Logit Model. First, three groups of important factors have been identified having a bearing on the national shipowners' hiring preferences: crew cost, competence and efficiency (including knowledge, skills, communication, physical and psychological attitude and conditions), as well as quality standard system complying with STCW95. Then, an empirical analysis, based on a Binary Logit Model about the national shipowners' choosing seafarers, is conducted to demonstrate the conceptual framework developed in this paper. The results show that the hiring decision is significantly affected by the crew cost. The national shipowners also consider several other factors when hiring officers and ratings. In addition, there are significant differences in hiring preference between the sailing international services and operating the liner ships. In the future, when the Measure shall be amended, the national shipowners will change their behavior to re-choose the foreign seafarers.     

The distribution of benefits from port investment

This paper examines the question of who gains from reduced freight rates passed on by shipowners who derive benefit from port investment.     

The bulk shipping business: market cycles and shipowners’ biases

Despite a strong linkage with the macro-economic course, the bulk shipping market, in the short period, follows a typical cyclic pattern, where continuous freight adjustments balance demand and supply movements.

In this context—widely unstable but quite regular in its general scheme—the shipowners may have enough competencies and information to take logical and consistent decisions about ship purchasing and chartering.

Yet, why do they periodically make mistakes?

The analysis of shipowners’ behaviour provides a reasonable answer: mistakes incur when they ignore or undervalue the market trends, following their personal intuition or even unwisely imitating their competitors.

The analysis of the Handysize segment among the bulk shipping business offers a significant example of the lack of timeliness in shipowners' behaviour: after a long period of disregard, operators began to notice the opportunities of this market niche and they are now heavily investing in minor units. Maybe it's not too late, but the market has already changed and only a few brave—or lucky—shipowners took advantage of the magic moment.     

世界钻井船市场发展现状

从钻井船的船龄结构、建造年份、船东、运营商、建造商,设计型式、作业水域、工作水深、钻井深度等方面论述了钻井船市场现状,展望了钻井船市场的未来发展。指出虽然在未来一两年内世界钻井船新船订造市场仍可能较为谨慎,但由于未来世界深海油气的开采对于钻井船的大量需求,钻井船建造市场的长期走势仍值得期待。     

Valuing cargo flexibility in oil transportation

The seaborne oil transportation market is served by two main types of vessels—crude oil tankers and product tankers. Product tankers are designed to move refined oil products, yet they can also opportunistically carry ‘dirty’ products such as crude and heavy fuel oil, subject to the cost of tank cleaning when re-entering the clean products trade. We apply an entry-exit real option model with a stochastic freight rate differential to derive optimal triggers for switching between the two cargo types and estimate the value of the switching option. We show that the value of active switching has grown over time, and generally exceeds the additional construction cost of a product tanker. Our findings are important both from a practical point of view and for our understanding of market integration in the tanker freight market. Specifically, shipowners can use our model as a basis for optimizing chartering policy for clean product tankers. We also show that there are periods where the dirty market is persistently stronger, and discuss the possible reasons for such apparent inefficiencies.     

Ship complexity assessment at the concept design stage

An innovative complexity metric is introduced that provides a way to compare similar or different ship types and sizes at the contract design stage. The goal is to provide the designer with this information throughout the design process so that an efficient design is obtained during the first design run. Application to and validation on real passenger ships indicate that there is a significant correlation between the error in an engineer’s judgement of complexity and the cost assessment error. It follows that this tool could be used to improve knowledge of the ship’s complexity at the contract design stage, and even to try to optimise the design if the complexity criteria are not fixed by the shipowners.     

船东风险评估及实证研究

船东风险是造船企业面临的主要风险之一.船东风险持续时间长、发生的后果对造船企业造成的损失大,并且由于受航运市场波动的影响,具有很大的不确定性,因此船东风险评估成为造船企业风险决策的重要依据.在建立船东主要风险体系的基础上,应用模糊层次分析法建立船东风险评估模型,通过调研我国某家厂的国外船东A,应用建立的船东风险评估模型对其进行风险评估,并对该船东的风险进行了分析.基于模糊层次分析的船东风险评估模型,将对船东风险的模糊判断转化成风险数值,以直观的形式将船东风险及影响船东风险内外部特征的评估值呈现出来,为船厂对船东风险分析与接单决策提供技术支持,具有普遍意义.     

Using system dynamics in maritime economics: an endogenous decision model for shipowners in the dry bulk sector

In this paper, we consider the benefits of applying system dynamics in maritime economics. We build an endogenous shipowners' model for the dry bulk sector, incorporating both the decision process of individual shipowners and traditional shipping market conditions. The aim is to arrive at a simulation tool that can be used for a variety of applications, both for teaching/learning and for research purposes. Within the endogenous shipping model, we can distinguish between the strategic and the tactical choices shipowners face. As an application, we focus explicitly on a strategic decision-making process that is relevant to any shipowner, i.e. the sale of a vessel. System dynamics seems to be a tool well-suited for the detailed modelling of strategic and operational behaviour in the maritime business.     

The Port of Melbourne Authority's pricing policy: its efficiency and distribution implications

The objective of this paper is investigate the extent to which the new (revised) pricing policy has improved the level of efficiency at the Port of Melbourne and to assess the contributions of the underlying factors of port efficiency. Further, it attempts to examine the distribution implications of the pricing policy between the major port users (i.e. shipowners and shippers) and its revenue implication for the Port of Melbourne. Using a conceptual framework derived from economic theories, in-house data and responses from the port users, the study reveals that the efficiency impact has been considerable and varied between berths; land transport links and crane productivity improvements were the major factors of the port's overall efficiency; the initial losers have been the shipowners and initial gainers the shippers; however, the gains have been limited and in some cases have been offset by the introduction of higher port service charges; in the long run it is likely that the shipowners and shippers' situations will be unchanged while the Port of Melbourne will lose revenue due to improvements in berth productivity uncompensated by greater traffic volume.     

Shipper's councils: role and responsibility—a western view

Traditionally, liner markets have been seen as dominated by conferences on the seller side, facing small, unorganized shippers onn the buyers' side. This perceived asymmetry has greatly influenced conference legislation in North America (and more recently in the E.U.) and it has been deemed essential that government should regulate conference activities in order to curb any abuse of 'conference power'. In this view, shipowners and shippers are adversaries engaged in a zero-sum battle over transport costs rather than potential or actual partners in global distribution systems. This paper suggests that in today's global markets much can be achieved by cooperationn in the development of logistics systems and that shipowners and shippers may have much to gain from such cooperative alliances. A survey of shippers' councils in 1991-1992 demonstrates the diversity and increasing sophistication of many national shippers' councils, which devote themselves to the task of improving markets through education and the legislative process. The situation in the U.S.A. is different: for legal reasons, conventional shippers' councils do not exist. Instead, 'shippers' associations' play a commercial role in liner markets. It is suggested that European style shippers' councils can and should play an important role in the development and formulation of policies for internatinal liner markets. Such participation requires a cooperative industry environment quite different from the traditional adversarial approach, which is ill suited to global trade and logistics alliances.     

Factors influencing the choice of flag: empirical evidence

The aim of this paper is to analyse the decision-making process of shipowners when adopting flags of registration. More specifically, it is interested in examining the relative importance of the factors related to an individual company's decision to flag out. The decision to change flag is viwed as similar to any other strategic decision by a profit maximizing firm (shipping company) and therefore those variables which influence the attractiveness, for a given firm, of taking the flagging out decision are analysed. The approach is two-fold in that it employs both qualitative and quantitative analysis. The research is innovative in the sense that it uses an econometric approach and the analysis is based on original data which has been obtained by the authors via a questionnarie and personal interviews with members of the UK shipping industry. The results deal with two particular sectors namely the tanker and general cargo markets and provide an insight into the magnitude and significance of various factors which affect the choice of flag. It is able to provide indications of the likelihood of a particular vessel being flagged out under different cirumstaces and, further, to consider how changes in these circumstances might affect the probability of the event occuring. The paper is structured in six parts comprising an introduction, back ground, methodology, qualitative analysis, econometric analysis, and conclusions.     

吊舱式推进器模型试验方法中的一些问题

近10多年来吊舱推进器在众多的船型上取得了成功的使用经验,预报其实船性能成为船东和设计部门关注的重点.文章介绍了吊舱式推进器的特点,分析了目前几种主要的吊舱推进器的模型试验方法及其特点,提出了在敞水、自航试验中需要关注的问题.     

基于博弈论的船舶超载治理分析

文中基于博弈论原理,从海事管理部门和船方两个责任主体利益出发,构建了双方博弈模型,通过模型的求解与均衡分析得到影响主体决策的因素,最后选取治超数据进行计算,得出超载船舶的纳什均衡数值区间     

A decision-making solution to ship flagging out via administrative maritime strategies

The choice of flag is one of the main strategic/critical decisions for shipowners in the initial stage of maritime enterprises. On the other hand, flagging out has a great influence on the prestige and economic benefits for traditional maritime countries. To address this issue, this paper proposes a Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) approach using a Primarily Strategic Action Plan (PSAP) in a short-run period and a Secondary Strategic Action Plan (SSAP) for a long-term perspective. The case is demonstrated with respect to the flagging out issue in Turkish shipping fleet. It measures the decision-making tendencies of shipowners using Turkish National Shipping Registry (TNSR), Turkish International Shipping Registry (TISR), and Open Registries (ORs) as potential shipping registry alternatives. The model outcomes originally contribute to Turkish maritime policy, especially in terms of strengthening and reinforcing of TNSR procedures.