Conference Liner Vs Regular Liner Vessel

[ybattia]

I'm looking for more professional information on the above captioned .
Your contributions and links for trusted sources would be very much appreciated.

Thanks,
Joe B. Attia, CDCS

[seeking]

Regular Liner Service – is a service that operates within a schedule and has a fixed port rotation with published dates of calls at the advertised ports.. A liner service generally fulfills the schedule unless in cases where a call at one of the ports has been unduly delayed due to natural or man-mad causes.

Conference Line – is similar to the Liner Service in most operational aspects BUT the difference is that Conference Line operators agree to maintain a similar rate structure to all the advertised ports.. This means that the lines operating within that Conference maintain a full monopoly on that trade route (if there are no other Conferences on the same route). However, now the Conference lines have become obsolete (Out dated - Nowadays not being used) and vessel operators within the same conference maintain their own rate structures. Shipping lines which are not members of a conference for a particular route are known as outsiders, independent lines or non-conference lines.

[phill doran]

Hello Joe
To add to seeking’s post;

The distinction was originally between ‘conference’ and ‘non-conference’. So both could be ‘liner’ services, where the word ‘liner’ is a reference to how the freight rate is structured in terms of whether or not it included the lifting on to or off of the vessel – or whether it was just a port-to-port freight rate (which is what a liner service offers – although they will arrange the loading and discharge it will be at an extra cost).
As seeking has mentioned, the distinction is blurred these days but at one point it was quite important.
A conference line was OBLIGATED to maintain its schedule regardless of cargo volumes – whereas a non-conference vessel could pull out of the schedule and reroute the vessel if volumes dropped off; so they were effectively a tramp service. In addition, a conference vessel was OBLIGATED to carry insurance to enable the carriage of all classes of hazardous cargo – whereas the non-conference could limit what type of cargo it would be prepared to carry. For example, the conference vessel must accept class 1.1 even though the potential freight revenue from such traffic is far lower than the insurance premium they would need to take out to cover the vessel etc. The non-conference vessel could refuse the booking and selectively insure the vessel accordingly.
In exchange for meeting these (and other) obligations, the countries serviced by the conference offered incentives (from preferential port dues to tax breaks and all points in between). The non-conference service did not necessarily enjoy.
This all started to change in the 1960’s and early 70’s with the expansion of containerisation and when ‘non-conference’ container carriers like Mediterranean Shipping started to offer regular services where they met the same obligations as the conference but without being obligated to do so – in so doing, they changed the market perception of the existing distinction – and if you track the rise of professional lines like MSC you will see it correlates to the decline of conference services.

cheers
phill

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