SIMIC

HMM (formerly Hyundai Merchant Marine), South Korea's flagship carrier, has designed an online system to locate and exchange empty containers, reports London's Loadstar.
The company has applied to patent its HMM Container Interchange Platform (HIP). "HIP is a self-developed service to quickly exchange HMM¡¯s containers with other companies to resolve the container imbalance by region," said HMM.
The imbalance of container supply across regions remained a chronic problem, despite freight levels and port congestion having normalised, said HMM. Backhaul shipments returning to Asia from Europe/North America are smaller than headhaul shipments, so empty containers pile up in Europe and North America.
And, as container processing was delayed during the height of the Covid scare, there were contracts cancelled because domestic export companies could not find empties.
Although the logistical bottlenecks have eased as global consumption and cargo volumes decreased, major ports and liner operators are still focusing on recovering containers by imposing demurrage fees if empty containers are not collected or returned on time.
In normal circumstances, shipping lines instruct logistics companies to return empty containers to depots. However, during the early wave of the pandemic, when there were insufficient yard workers to unpack them, certain ports found themselves overflowing with empty containers.
Said HMM: "When we look through our service areas, not every location has sufficient container stock at all times. Shipping lines often experience an imbalance of containers between different regions. In that regard, we expect our container exchange platform will be beneficial to relocate our assets to container-deficient locations more efficiently."
HMM said exchanging empties in each region with other liners through HIP would speed up container relocation.