Baltic speaks on creating shipping service centres at Ningbo conference
Ningbo is a leading port, now the busiest in the world for cargo tonnage, and is looking to develop its own maritime services sector. During his talk, Chris Jones highlighted the maritime services strengths of world centres London, Hamburg, Singapore, Hong Kong, Athens and New York.
Maritime professional services were clearly defined as opposed to port services and the importance of going beyond serving ships in port and moving up the value chain stressed.
The key to success was highlighted as the ability to attract international shipping companies, whose presence in turn attracts professional services firms. International shipping companies’ predilection for locations where there is both business (cargo) and a support network / incentivised business environment (e.g. tax breaks) was also explained, with the importance of promotional activity, training of a local workforce and attraction of an international workforce emphasised.
The Baltic is closely connected to the Ningbo Shipping Exchange and publishes its container freight rates from Ningbo to Europe and the Middle East.
The weekly Ningbo Containerised Freight Index covers the movement of 20 ft, 40 ft and High Cube containers. It is based on transactional data from business conducted by a panel of 11 Ningbo based freight forwarders on Ningbo Exchange’s e-trading platform.