End of an Era for Liner Conferences in Europe

(Journal of Commerce Online – Bruce Barnard)

Liner shipping conferences will be outlawed in Europe beginning at midnight Saturday, ushering in a new era of deregulation just as ocean carriers face slowing traffic growth and tumbling freight rates.

Beginning Saturday container shipping lines calling at European ports will be banned from discussing freight rates and other fees such as bunker and currency surcharges and from publishing common tariffs.

Instead, carriers will negotiate rates individually with shippers, ending a system of collective rate-setting dating back to the first conference, the Calcutta Steam Traffic Conference, set up by British cargo lines in 1875.

The Far Eastern Freight Conference established a year later to cover the Asia-Europe trade, the world’s second-largest after the trans-Pacific, will close today along with scores of other rate-setting groups in trades with Africa, South America, the Indian sub-continent, the Middle East and Australasia. Some, including the Trans-Atlantic Conference Agreement, have already ceased operations. Read more here.

Related: The British International Freight Association (BIFA), the trade association for UK freight forwarders, has welcomed the end of liner conferences as “a new era for shipping and trade liberalization.” Read more here.