While there has been much talk of disruption to the liner shipping industry, executives and analysts do not believe it will face “Kodak Moment” where the sector is entirely replaced by a new way of doing business.
From Blockchain to online freight booking platforms to the likes of Amazon, container shipping is seen as coming under major threat of disruption.
“There is a lot of talk of disruption,” Jeremy Nixon of Ocean Network Express (ONE), said at the Asian Logistics and Maritime Conference in Hong Kong.
He said the sector was not facing what he termed as a “Kodak Moment”, referring to the photography and film company that went from being the world’s fifth most valuable brand, employing 145,000 people globally in 1996 to bankruptcy in 2012 as it was overtaken by the development of digital photography.
Alan Murphy, the CEO of SeaIntel Maritime Analysis agreed saying that the container shipping had not seen a “Kodak Moment”.
“There’ll always be a need for container shipping,” he said.
Murphy also said online retail giant was not about to buy ships, and referred to a similar plan related to Walmart 15 years earlier.
Amazon’s move to acquire NVOCC licenses in the last two years had prompted rumours that it could move into the container shipping space.
Commenting on Blockchain, he said while everyone was talking about it, how it was going to be used was another question.
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