In September 2016, container company CMA CGM started a permanent service between Vlissingen and West Africa. “It was a service companies were actually waiting for,” says Eduard Backer, managing director of CMA CGM Holland. Because of the close cooperation with the sector, the shipping company developed a proper passion for onions.
CMA CGM is one of the biggest container companies in the world. It has 509 ships in its fleet. The company uses 200 important sea routes between 420 ports in 160 different countries. The weekly departure from Vlissingen to West Africa is maintained using a boat of 4,500 TEU. “It’s a niche market but we experienced a wonderful increase, so that we can also offer continuity. Initially, the service was only active during the high season, but we were soon able to decide to maintain the service year-round. I truly consider this a success story, it’s fun to see the principle of ‘taking the boat to the market’ still working.”
Success
The success of the service is in part thanks to the close cooperation between exporters and Salim Nasri, commercial sales manager of CMA CGM. Salim developed into an onion expert. “During the high season, a lot of onions are shipped to Dakar in Senegal, onions are shipped to Nouckchott, Free Town and Conakry, among other places, year-round. A very important date in the onion trade is the moment stocks in Africa run out. Trade with third parties is then decontrolled,” Salim says. “Everyone’s waiting for that moment, and large volumes are shipped.” That’s also when Dutch onion exporters want to book room on the boats. “During the peak season, the boat is too small and there’s not enough room. It’s like a hotel, when it’s fully booked, it’s fully booked. When exporters book on time and estimate the needed space properly, there won’t be any problems.”
A number of links from the supply chain were dropped for traders and exporters because of the service, which has resulted in an improved product flow to West Africa, in addition to environmental and time gains. “In the past, no deep sea boats arrived in Vlissingen. Exporters used lorries or inland vessels to bring the onions to Antwerp or Rotterdam, although this involved more risks. Now, the exporters can bring the onions to the port themselves. Demand for containers, which we are good at, is also growing. In the past, large batches of onions were loaded onto conventional boats, and new orders were only placed after these had all been sold.
Because of that, onions sometimes spent weeks in the blazing sunshine in Dakar, for instance, which wasn’t good for the condition of the onions. Now, smaller amounts can be shipped in containers every week, which is much better for the quality,” Eduard says. Besides the lower transport costs, the risk that a container ‘missed the boat’ and has to wait in the port has also been reduced. “In Vlissingen, wait times are much shorter than in Antwerp and Rotterdam. It’s very annoying when containers are at sea a week longer because of delays. The onion trade has an additional risk because of the volatile onion price, which can suddenly drop, making the ‘old’ onions more difficult to sell,” Salim explains. “A conditioned container can hold 29,000 kilos of onions. Onions are custom-ordered. Dakar mostly receives large onions, but other African countries prefer smaller sizes. The sizes for the various countries can be packed separately in bales of 25 kilos on pallets, and all of this can be transported in a container.”
During the trip, CMA CGM takes care of the shipment. Salim: “The trip can take several weeks, and it’s important that the temperature remains at 8 degrees Celsius in the conditioned containers during all that time. Onions are a living product, and in the past the onions had to be able to breathe so that quality decreased during the trip. The low temperature in the conditioned container ensures all processes in the onion are brought to a standstill nowadays, so that the onion is in a sort of coma. During the trip, we monitor whether the conditioned containers remain operational. We once transferred a shipment of onions to a new container in Le Havre, because the motor of the conditioned container had stopped working.Transparency regarding the product during the trip is becoming ever more important. We now offer the GPS location of the container, whether shocks occurred in the shipment and whether the container remained closed as an additional service, but I expect this will become standard in the future.”
Difficult season
The onion trade had a difficult season in 2018, the dry summer left its marks in Zeeland in particular. CMA CGM has noticed that in volumes. “This year has fewer and often smaller onions. For us, that means we shipped fewer shipments in the past year. We’re a company driven by volume, and we can’t compensate our service in price. The volumes of onions we transport are considerably seasonal, in any case. When the borders are closed in Africa, volumes drop significantly, but in part thanks to the better transport opportunities and quality gains, we now have plenty of volume to keep the service operational year-round. People should grant you shipments as well, and we fortunately get a lot of support from the sector so that the work keeps coming.”
By setting up the service, CMA CGM therefore became very familiar with the world behind onions. “I’ve been in the transport of containers my whole life. My favourite part is still knowing what is in the containers; the importance of and for the shipments. I visited exporters several times. It’s fascinating what they manage to do. Everything is about speed for them, so much can be gained by working well together. The more we know, the better we can respond to demand,” Eduard concludes.
For more information:
rtm.ebacker@cma-cgm.com
rtm.snasri@cma-cgm.com