Shipping line dominance and freight rate practices on trade routes: the case of the Far East-South Africa trade

摘要

This paper examines the issue of shipping line dominance, taking the Far East-South Africa trade as an example. This study has two objectives: first, to collect sea freight rates for trades in relation to South Africa (SA) so as to understand general trends in price setting by shipping lines and ship capacities on the SA routes; and second, to examine whether evidence can be found on the potential dominance of shipping lines on the SA trading routes from the Far East (FE). To achieve these two goals, this study collected freight rates from major shipping lines serving the routes of major Asian ports to SA ports and comparing the operating costs between different shipping lines by way of analysing the capacity and types of container ships deployed on FE-SA trade routes.