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Senin, 13 Mei 2013

Maritime Transport Markets


Literally, a market is a physical place where commodities are sold and bought, How ever in modern and extended sense, a market can be defined as a space over which buyers negotiate the exchange of a well defined commodity, it must be possible for buyers and sellers to communicate with each other and to make meaningful deals over the whole market (Lipsey 1993).

Shipping market can therefore be physically tangible place such as London's Baltic Exchange, or it can also be intangible, such as cyber space, where good communication between sellers and buyers are available.

Markets separated from each other by the type of commodity (or service) sold, by natural barriers such as distance and by man-made barriers such as borders and customs.

Shipping is a special sector different from other service sectors of economic activities, the maritime market is also a special one. Originally, when shipping activities were at the beginning and at a low level, the market was undivided and not specialized. There were not many types of ships and the transport requirements were simple and similar whenever and wherever the transport took place. How ever , as trade increased, cargo volume grew and the market expanded around the middle of the last century, with an economic motivation for higher productivity , a specialization process started to happen in the shipping sector with new types of ships being introduce to carry particular kinds of cargo. To mention just a few examples in the recent period; containerization started in the 1950 and 1960; Pure Car Carriers in the 1960; LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) Carriers also in the 1960.

Subsequently, shipping today consist of many distinct markets, it is now wrong, and meaningless to talk and discuss shipping as one activity. There is not one shipping market but there several markets differentiated by ship type, trade requirement and geographical location.

As a matter of fact the market of crude oil transport has little to do with that of cars, similarly regular liner shipping service between, say, New Zealand and Australia does not have much relationship with the regular sea transport between the Caribbean Island . Consequently, shipping markets should be examined as different sub-markets or categories according to the ship type (oil, tanker, bulk carrier, container ships, car carriers, etc.), shipping requirements (liner, tramp,etc.) or geographical locations of the market (intra asia, Baltic Sea, West Africa-Europe, etc.)

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