Short sea shipping giant DFDS has taken action to make its business more effective.
Short sea shipping is defined as regional route services by ships under 35,000 dwt with several port calls per week. For short sea shipping to become more effective, the focus is on reduced time in port, and increased cargo volume. Today ro-ro is the most effective type of ship for short sea shipping in northern Europe, but DNV Forum asked Claus Kruse, project manager, and Richard Berg-Larsen, general manager Fleet&Chartering at DFDS what are the future prospects for ro-ro?
“Nobody is building ro-ros on speculation anymore. It’s only being built for contract work,” says Mr Berg-Larsen. He notes that deep sea ro-ro’s are becoming rare. Grimaldi is one of the few shipowners to have recently ordered new deep sea ro-ro vessels, apart from car ships, as the ships are heavy, expensive to run and don’t utilise the space to the maximum.
Mr Kruse says the future lies in ‘the scale of economics’ – increasing volume. ‘Jumboizing’ ships is a key concept, but the ports need to be able to handle the more demanding ships.
Newer and fewer ships can replace three older ships, due to greater space and greater speed.
“Our Flensburg ships are 1,000 lane-meter bigger than the ships they replaced,” says Mr Berg-Larsen. “They’re all sailing full today.”
Freight transport volume in DFDS is increasing by 3-5% a year. The big problem today is a shortage of truck drivers. When Baltic drivers’ wages start nearing the western European level, it may affect the way shipping in the Baltic is done today. It will no longer be feasible for customers to pay for driver accompaniment for 30 hours on a ro-pax ship.
Some basic rules
No matter what type of ship will be the mainstay of regional shipping, there are some basic rules.
“There is always a danger in specialising too much,” says Mr Berg-Larsen. “If a ship is too specialized you’ll have trouble selling it later on.” On the other hand, a ship can easy be designed to be too flexible. “Then it becomes multi-useless,” says Mr Kruse. “You can design a ship that is so fantastic that it doesn’t make any money.”
Mr Kruse and Mr Berg-Larsen appreciate the input from research projects like LOGBASED – logistics based design. However, few shipowners have enough funds and time for independent research and development.
Innovative environment
“We’re participating in an innovative environment,” says Mr Kruse. “It also gives us a network.”
“DNV has the capacity and the people to go in and do thorough work in research and development for us,” says Mr Berg-Larsen.
Date: 08 June 2007