Ron Widdows: Landside cooperation is “inevitable”

Landside collaboration offers the container transportation industry its “single biggest remaining opportunity to reduce inefficiency” according to Ron Widdows, the former chief executive of Singapore-based firm, Neptune Orient Lines (NOL).

In an interview with CM during the International Transport Forum Summit in Leipzig, he said that while alliances have helped carriers find economies of scale on the ocean, opportunities for cooperation on feeders, barges, intermodal and truck have largely been untapped.

Speaking in a personal capacity, the current chairman of the World Shipping Council, said: “Lines have either wrung out or are in the process of wringing out the fuel economy and the impact of larger ships on the ocean which has seen the single largest area of savings.”