The acquisition comes as companies are looking at providing more inland distribution services.
Ocean shipping technology provider INTTRA is joining the sector’s push from the water to inland services with the acquisition of a European container tracking business.
What happened?
The New Jersey-based company, which claims that 27% of all global trade transactions that move by ocean transport run on its platform, said Tuesday it will buy Belgium-based Avantida, which helps companies find empty containers and move them into position to ship goods through their supply chains. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
Finding shipping containers is a significant issue in trade since imported goods often end up far from sites that generate exported goods. That means exporters and their logistics providers must often go long distances to get and then move empty containers to farms or factories to load outbound goods.
“We are stepping outside of ocean and following the container onto the land side,” said INTTRA Chief Executive John Fay. “What we are doing is following our customers.”
Consortium with INTTRA:
INTTRA, which provides the back-end technology for booking ocean freight shipments, is majority-owned by ABS Capital Partners. It was launched 16 years ago by a consortium of big shipping lines, which still own more than 40% of the business.
The acquisition comes as some of the company’s shipping owners, including Maersk Line, the world’s biggest container ship operator, are looking at providing more inland distribution services.
Maersk, the container shipping unit of energy and transportation giant A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, said in December it plans to extend its reach into customers’ supply chains with stronger inland services that reach deeper into its customers’ supply chains.
“Our aim is to become a global integrator of container logistics,” Maersk Chief Executive Soren Skou told investors at the group’s capital markets day gathering in Copenhagen in December.
Spotlight on port-to-port:
Many ship operators stepped away from broader service packages several years ago to focus on port-to-port service.
Gregory Smith, an enterprise consultant at India-based supply chain technology company Tech Mahindra, said the strategy is aimed at generating more cargo on the supersize ships that carriers have added to their fleets.
“Those ships need to be full to be cost-effective,” said Mr.Smith, “To get more of those shipments, they need to look inland rather than just imagining that their customers’ supply chains stop and start at the water’s edge. That means helping their customers solve a problem, which is what INTTRA is doing by helping shippers get their hands on containers.”
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Source: WSJ
