Finding a general purpose niche

By that reckoning a 19,000 teu mega containership should displace over 60 general cargo ships and with the whole fleet of container ships at over 20m teu there should be no need for those multi-purpose general cargo ships anymore. Right?

Wrong. There are probably around 17,000 of these ships in service according to Drewry carrying more than 400m tonnes of cargo. Truth be told, the number of ships has not expanded and indeed has declined in recent years as has the volume of cargo that they carry, but by definition of their name they have survived.

These ships carry anything from large parcels of sugar to containers, steel and heavy equipment. As more and more cargo headed for containers, general cargo ships carved out a niche for themselves in the lesser developed parts of the world as well as in China and Southeast Asia.

They are active in the ASEAN countries which have many small ports with limited facilities and which are frankly not very attractive to containerships, of any size. The same is true for the smaller Chinese ports which often do not have the infrastructure required for larger ships nor sufficient draft to attract vessels other than the smaller general cargo ships.

These ships clearly serve their purpose, and as their numbers decline due to aging, the potential for owners to increase freight rates in order to achieve a better return on investment also increases.

In Singapore, Jurong Port is dedicated to serving general cargo ships of all sizes, highlighting that even in an economy as sophisticated as Singapore there is room for the “odd man out”.

More should be done in countries that depend on waterbourne transportation to help develop the ports and support the all-encompassing multi-purpose trade.