April 2022

Mikel Urrutia, General Manager of Vasco Shipping participated as a speaker on March 17 at the XIV edition of Transmodal (Vitoria-Spain)

 

“The supply crisis” was the theme chosen in this edition. The head of Vasco Shipping analyzed this issue in the context of the infrastructures in the hands of shipowners. Mikel Urrutia underlined the importance of the human team as a key element in this entire process “being close to customers is now more important than ever”.

He highlighted the importance of digitization and the entry in recent years of extended services. He recalled how, before the pandemic, we found ourselves with “a supply greater than the demand with falling freight rates and unsustainable situations with million-dollar losses. This led shipping companies to take measures in favor of sustainability. The indiscriminate growth of the container park was limited, trying to optimize the flow of containers, some exits were suppressed to accommodate supply and space, ships were resized to fleets with greater capacity and operations were concentrated in a series of ports capable of these fleets. , also giving greater importance to feeders and their local networks”

 

Mikel Urrutia  added how, for its part, the pandemic brought as an initial result “the delay in contracting new ships, limiting supply, finding in the second quarter of 2000 with a very strong rebound in private and industrial consumption, going from just in time to just in case and putting highlighted the significant vulnerability of the supply chain. The waves of congestion in different parts of the planet cause the entire chain to suffer despite the efforts of the operators and the measures implemented, resulting in a collapse in the integrity of the services. In the future, shipping companies will focus on sustainability as a differentiating element, fleet growth will be sustained and logistics networks will be strengthened on both sides of the main route”.

 

Among other suggestions to the market, he indicated that “we will have to modify the way of working and think that we must plan in the long term, we have to get involved in knowing the needs of the other party and we have to be able to reach mutually beneficial strategic agreements. The integration of logistics in the core of the business is going to be important”.