The Future of Ship Agency Sits in the Cloud
With the Coronavirus pandemic hitting many segments of the global shipping industry particularly hard, it is understandable that businesses of all sizes are reviewing their budgets for 2020 and beyond and looking for ways to reduce costs while maintaining their operations. Supply chains are being disrupted, inspections postponed or conducted remotely, crew transfers complicated, and paperwork ditched as social distancing measures are in place. The role of the ship agent is of even greater importance during these troubling times…
Container Shipping & Perfecting on-time Performance
Recent reports show that on-time performance in the containership sector continues to deteriorate, causing tension between the carriers and retailers. In general, non-ocean carriers – trucks and trains – are achieving reliability rates well above 90% whereas containerships rarely beat a 70% on-time threshold. For retailers, the threat of having empty shelves is beginning to swing the balance from cheaper ocean transport to a need for reliable just-in-time deliveries supplied by…
Containershipping: Restoring Balance
The repositioning of empty containers costs the liner industry an estimated $15-20billion every year according to Boston Consulting Group (BCG), as containers sit idle at a depot or are repositioned to a different loading point while empty. This is time spent not earning revenue, whil incurring additional costs, and is estimated by BCG to account for 5-8% of total operating costs for an average container liner. These expenses can include inland repositioning by rail or road onto a different port or terminal…
Software Solutions: Communicate or Stagnate
It’s likely that you are reading this article in your office. And for most of us, that means a large, open-plan space arranged with desks, monitors, break-out rooms and other features designed both to keep us productive and to facilitate communication and collaboration. We have New York City to thank for the emergence of the shared office back at the turn of the last century. But it is relatively recently that “Bürolandschaft”, or office landscaping, became popular encouraging…
Maritime Software: On the Origin of Meaning
The IT sector, like most other industries, is awash with technical jargon, terminology, acronyms and abbreviations that have very specific meanings. More than most other major industries, however, TechSpeak - the language of IT people - is regularly co-opted into the language of the everyday. This is an inevitable consequence of our increasingly networked, IT-driven world; but often there is a disconnect between the way we discuss technologies and the benefits they can bring; how they are designed to be used; and how we actually use them.
Softship Issues IPO At $3.42 Per Share
German software company Softship will issue shares in its initial public offering at $3.42 per share, below the company's $4.50-$5.35 bookbuilding range, the lead underwriter said on Tuesday. Andreas Beyer, CEO at VEM Virtuelle Emissionshaus, reportedly said the company would delay its initial public offering by one day to June 22 to allow investors to place orders for the stock at the reduced issue price. Due to adverse market conditions, Softship, which makes software for the shipping industry, will not be listed in the small-cap SMAX index but on stock exchange's official trading segment. The company's lower-than-expected issue price comes amid an increasingly unfavorable market environment for IPOs in Germany.
