The advent of e-commerce and its increasing popularity on a global scale have prompted container carrier Orient Overseas Container Lines (OOCL) to evaluate and relook at potential partnerships with online retail giants, according to Andy Tung, ceo of OOCL.
“As a supplier of hard cargo goods, we are still not sure what changes we need to make or provide,” Tung said, referring to container lines collaboration with online retailers like Amazon and Alibaba.
“Amazon and Alibaba seem to be taking over the customer relationship aspect from shippers and on our end we need to think about how such changes will impact upon us,” Tung said at the Sea Asia Global Forum held in Singapore on Tuesday.
Over the course of this year, Denmark’s Maersk Line has tied up with China’s Alibaba for online booking from China and IBM on the use of Blockchain to digitise paperwork processes. France’s CMA CGM has also teamed up with Alibaba to provide online booking for shipments.
