Seafarers may soon look to major cargo owners for opportunities
In June, major cargo owner Home Depot chartered its own vessel designated for shipments. Another big retailer, Walmart has decided to follow suit to mitigate potential losses from shipowners’ loadings and port bottlenecks.
Acquiring own ships
With bottlenecks threatening world trade, cargo owners were either compelled to accept the surcharges, or pause shipping and wait it out. However, both are not sustainable given supply chain recovery is not expected to take shape till at least H1 2022. While smaller vessels are gaining traction, cargo owners would need to consider other avenues to sustain their inventories with retailers.
Brett Biggs, Walmart’s Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, said the company is experiencing significant growth in the United States. Highlighting Walmart “was evolving” with increasing e-Commerce demand, Biggs pointed out the company was developing new fulfilment centres to meet that order. Walmart’s President and CEO, John Furner added the firm raised its inventory by 20 per cent over the past six months, and is in a good position to address the “cost pressures” anticipated in Q3 and Q4 2021.
What does it mean for seafarers
Though Walmart gave no additional comments about their impending venture, major manpower and equipment shortage is prevalent in the industry. With cargo owners taking steps to have their own shipping arms, it offers seafarers another employment avenue. The only question is if the seafarer would be under the cargo owner’s payroll or that of the chartering subsidiary.
Taking this further, this may start a new hiring trend. Crewing Online is a melting pot of employers looking for qualified crew, and vice-versa. Cargo owners doubling as shipowners can also look to Marine Online for crewing needs. They can either engage manning agencies or handpick their own candidates with the extensive listing of qualified professionals in Marine Online.
Crewing Online News Team
Please email us at marketing@marineonline.com to contact the author for this article.
