As you may be aware, due to EU legislation, as of 16th October 2008, the antitrust immunity to liner shipping conferences for European trade will be abolished. From that date, liner conferences on trade routes to and from the EU will be prohibited.

For the best part of 130 years, the liner conferences have set or given guidance on rates, including surcharges and local handling costs. This has had some stabalising effect in some areas such as terminal handling, but has also enabled the market rates to increase, sometimes when not appropriate.

There will be a certain amount of uncertainty in the markets over the coming months, as every shipping line will have to set its own rates for each element of an international movement. We are already seeing that lines are starting to discuss new handling tariffs, meaning that we will pay a shipping line the same handling rate regardless of the point of origin or destination, whereas we are all used to paying a rate based on trade lane i.e. Far East £69 per container and USA £114 per container.