During the current cycle, beneficial cargo owners and their carrier partners must deal with multiple factors in designing their contracts. These include the state of the global economy, projected market conditions, the supply-demand imbalance, potential carrier capacity issues, shipment seasonality, shifting manufacturing origins, and long-term carrier stability. Additionally, this year, the full impact of evolving carrier alliances hits the performance curve. Deliberations are further complicated by the perception among many shippers of a lack of collaboration and declining carrier performance.
The Ocean Contracting Outlook white paper is a primer for 2018, detailing best practices for contract design and negotiation, projected rate levels for the balance of the year, and BCO and carrier expectations and strategies for collaboration. These conclusions are based upon a series of interviews with industry thought leaders and the results of a recently completed survey conducted by JOC.com/IHS Markit and Gemini Shippers Group. The paper is sponsored by Gemini.
