On March 22 (Sun) I left Haneda for Beijing and moved to Tianjin by car on the same day. I remembered that I arrived at Beijing Airport from Shanghai over 20 years ago and moved to Tianjin. I felt Beijing Airport didn’t look like the airport of the capital of China but like one of the local airports at that time. Almost all passengers on board were foreigners. So they gave a big hand to the pilot for safety landing on Beijing Airport. The businessmen were so nervous when they took the domestic airlines in China at that time. However, Beijing Airport has changed so much like No.2 Airport in the world and No. 1 Airport in China which 83 million passengers use a year. There are 3 big terminals. Its scale is huge. I had to face the big time gap of over the 20 years. I remember that a Japanese local government official stationed in China regretted 10 years ago “China has been 30 years behind of Japan”. Now it is sad that Chinese manners are bad but we, Japanese also have had bad manners in the past. It has been improving according to the times. I am confident that it is a matter of time. Their manner will change almost beyond recognition in 20 years or 10 years.
I visited MCC Tank factory located in Tianjin to inspect Tanks which we ordered them. Their factory site is 200,000 square meter of which 80,000 square meter is for their factory. Their production capacity is 5,000 tanks per year with 3 production lines. Their factory strained my eyes for their modern assembly line by minimizing parts from an outside order and most of the parts to be covered by their group companies. As a result the quality and price of their tank could become more reliable and competitive. In addition they emphasized that they have been very careful of the welding job because the welding is life of the tank container. X-ray facility of covering 2 tanks in space is built with the thick concrete and they have been checking one by one. They have kept the record of X-ray test on the tanks which have successfully passed in their system so that it would give me their positive attitude about quality of their tanks.
On March 24 I joined Intermodal Asia held in Shanghai Exhibition in Pudong area. Exhibition hall was crowded with many people as usual it was regrettable to say that there were not many Japanese there. It was natural that there were many Chinese as it was held in China. However, I feel that Japanese seem to be slow to act like taking the trouble to attend Intermodal Show even though many people have been engaging in container business in Japan. The companies that have a booth in Intermodal Asia were container leasing companies, container makers including special and offshore container makers, container part companies, part supplier companies, paint companies, floor material companies, logistic companies, consulting companies and including many companies. Some European companies are also promoting their own products. Japan market seems to be attractive to the foreign companies but it looks like a closed market which would make them hard to understand. Besides both few Japanese companies and small number of Japanese in Intermodal would make them feel like that. Therefore, they would be interested in me, just Japanese and I was often asked by some of them to be their agent in Japan.
Intermodal Show is held twice a year, one in Asia in spring, another in Europe in autumn. COA (Container Owners Association) is a supporting organization to Intermodal Show and their regular meeting will be held one day before Intermodal Show. COA is offering their own booth with wider space where people could get together there. People of the major shipping companies in the world are also a member of COA so that they would visit various booths of Intermodal. Therefore, companies try not to miss such good chance to aggressively talk with them. It would offer shipping company people the latest information of container business besides shipping business. In this respect I think that COA and Intermodal Show would be indispensable to people and companies engaging in container business. In order to cope with such need COA was established in 2004 as an international organization representing the common interest of all owners of freight containers to promote common standards and to facilitate international lobbying.
New container price is $1,850 per 20f. The number of new containers in all factories in China is 954,000teu at present.
On April 1 the news of OOCL ordered the largest containership of 6 x 21,100teu was carried. It is more than 20,100teu which MOL ordered. There will be 78 mega containerships which have slot capacity of more than 18,000teu at present. Mega containership will be expected to increase from now on. Maersk Line has already proved larger ships effective in cost cutting as successful example. In this point alliance has significant meaning. Each shipping companies should be managed to handle larger ships in the trade route of North America, Asia and the north & south by a cascading phenomenon. Container demand will increase according to lager ships to be introduced in each trade route. Shipping Guide quotes Dynamar to refer that the number of containers owned by leasing companies has exceeded one of shipping companies. The leasing companies own 18.2 million teu at the end of 2014.
4 Major Container Leasing Companies in the world
Textainer 320
Triton 240
TAL 230
SeaCo 220 (unit: million teu)
Importance of leasing companies are increasing. However, container leasing companies could not exist without shipping lines. Therefore, it is inevitable for leasing companies how to support shipping lines in order for leasing companies to survive in the market.
By the way, incidentally I wanted 2 staff of our company to attend Intermodal Show in order to experience pleasure of meeting people coming from the different fields of container business. we visited the booth of the companies whom we represents such as Kukdong MES, UES and participated in the dinner party hosted by Thermo King and 2 staff to join one day trip to Thermo King factory on the following day. I believe this would give them a valuable experience how important face to face meetings were because they experienced the positive replies of “Yes” from the face to face talking changing from negative reply by email from customers whom they usually communicates by email. It is very important how we see people face to face now, much more to deal with foreigners.