Is it best to strike a deal quickly or to let the clock run down a bit before signing 2024-2025 contracts with the container shipping companies? Here are our recommendations for getting the best deal in the new contract negotiating season.
It has escaped no one that the summer holidays are over. Companies are busy with their next year's budgets. The weather has turned, and additional lines and columns have been added to the Excel spreadsheets, as they are each year. In the container shipping sector, meanwhile, the arrival of autumn traditionally marks the start of the annual contract negotiating season.
From the shippers' point of view, the task is to move at the right time to get the rate they want for their current and future cargo transportation requirements. Agreement is generally reached after three rounds of tendering and sometimes four for the most keenly fought over cargo lines.
A colossal and difficult task
For the shipping companies and their clients, this operation requires a colossal amount of data processing and heavy pressure to arrive at a result which is almost always imperfect. Shipping contracts are highly fastidious and sometimes unpredictable because of the possibility of major external events occurring during the life of the contract (incidents involving force majeure, for example).
Container shipping contracts are characterised in the first place by the...
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