Early signs may be positive for the Gemini Cooperation’s “hub and spoke” model, but head of hubs and collaboration at APM Terminals Lars Jensen has claimed “it’s only the end of pre-season”, with the real test still to come.
At the launch of Maersk’s latest dual-fuel vessel, Adrian Maersk, Mr Jensen, said that reliability levels on the loops having left Asia had hit 96%.
“We have seen a really promising start, with the reliability on all the services departing Asia in the mid-90s, but the determinant will be when ships begin arrive in Europe and making use of the system of connections from there,” Mr Jensen continued.
“Up until now, I would say we have been in pre-season, but the season has started now, and we will be judged on our capacity matching and what goes in and what goes out.”
Under the Gemini model, the two partner lines (Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk) have reduced the number of direct calls made by their larger vessels, opting for a hub system based around seven ports, from which their smaller feeder ships can service neighbouring ports.
Effectively halving the number of direct calls made, Mr Jensen said, allowed for improved efficiency and reliability, building in additional time for delays.
“Essentially, any delays that do happen can be contained to one of the hub calls, meaning we can mitigate the knock-on impact to the route network… it’s about localising the damage to ensure we hit the reliability levels sought by our customers,” he continued.
And, by using APM Terminals, it allowed for the prioritisation of Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk vessels, which Mr Jensen said left them as “the only game in town”.
Asked about responses to the model, he said it had been a “mindset shift” for the carrier and the carrier’s customers, but he stressed that the carriers were “convinced the regularity and efficiencies offered by this model can lead to an increase in throughput, but it needs proving”.
Responding to a question from The Loadstar, he said that with the time between calls lengthened, they were able to run simulations before ship arrival to ensure proper discharge of containers.
“I’m not sure the different models [in reference to network’s maintaining traditional number of calls] are in competition, some shippers favour ours others maybe favour MSC’s but by mid-year with all the vessels phased in, we should have a sense on how it is going,” he added.