DEVELOPMENT OF RO-RO IN CHINA

    In recent years,with the rapid growth of Chinese auto exports, the year of 2005 is called the Chinese auto export year by the industry. Data show that in 2005 China exported 173,000 vehicles, and exports reached 1.58 billion dollars; January to July 2006, the number of auto exports have already equaled with the number of full-year 2005 reaching 173,000 vehicles, exports 1.56 billion S. dollars. In this trend, in 2006 no matter the number or the amount of cars exported will far exceed last year.

     However, with the opportunities of export trade, the domestic auto ocean transport capacity is a serious shortage, and the capacity lag of Ro-Ro ship has become the big problem for many car companies.

    Analysis of the causes of auto exports transport bottleneck

    Guo Jianli, the Great Wall Motor's vice president for overseas markets, told reporters that "in 2006 Great Wall Motor export in good situation,have exported 28,000 vehicles by now. Because of the shortage of domestic automobile Ro-Ro ship, we almost used the Japanese, South Korea Ro-Ro ship. But the time, they come to China, is less basically once a month, we have to make reservations a  month in advance. By the reason of less parking space, in the most time we have transport by container ship. But the container ship is not the professional transport ship for auto, it can cause damage of cargo during transport, and affect to sell.”

    Foreign auto exports are transported by Ro-Ro. Auto Ro-Ro is a special transport ship, specifically for water transport of automotive. Compared with other water transports, it has the advantageous of high efficiently load and unload, low require to terminal, little cost of transportation. Compared with container transport, the cost of it transport at least reduced by 20% to 30%. In reported, construction of a medium-sized Ro-Ro will cost 100 million dollars

    A person engaged in automotive logistics, told reporters, because the resource of Ro-Ro is less, some companies can only arrange production schedules, according to shipment.

    The reason of less Ro-Ro is mainly caused by the character of car companies exports. In general, individual enterprises in the domestic exports 1000 to 2000 cars at most in a batch, most of the time only a few hundred or even dozen of cars, and in international routes the Ro-Ro own the car parking spaces more than 3000. Because of less cargo and more batch, we have to share the boat or use the free parking of left by Korean, Japanese auto companies.

    Another reason of restriction of car export is the dispersed and remote route. Chinese auto exports always use free parking spaces lift by others, but the majority area of Chinese current export is the Middle East, Africa and South America. These places because they are not the mainstream route is with little ships relatively. At present, the world's automobile Ro-Ro capacity are strained. Asian countries, the last two years, have rapid developed auto exports, and Ro-Ro particularly is more tense. Hyundai exported more than 2 million a year, Toyota exported 7 million cars a year, and all they are transported by Ro-Ro. The Ro-Ros servicing for Korean Hyundai is too tense to wait distributing after unloading the cargo in Europe, and have to directly come back to Korea topickhe next batch of cars. By the reason of their tense parking, Chinese enterprises can use even less

    As the number scattered, many Chinese auto companies can sign maritime agreement with large international ship companies. Not only sailing can not be guaranteed, but also the freight is much higher than Japanese and Korean enterprises. The same distance, if the Japanese and Korean business freights is 40 to 50 dollars per cubic meter, Chinese companies freights is up to 60 to 70 dollars.

    High freight and low price lead to high costs for many Chinese auto exports transport. The route from Shanghai to Dubai, for example, market freight as high as 50 to 60 dollars per cubic meter, and a mini-car Geely produced need about 10 cubic meters of parking spaces, so it is transported from Shanghai to the Persian Gulf more than 5,000 yuan, which is almost equivalent to the price of 10% to 20%.

    Construct China own automobile Ro-Ro ship team

    According to statistics, there are 450 Ro-Ro ships around the world now, capacity of containment average is4000 ~ 6000 car parking spaces, the largest has 7,000 parking spaces, and most of which are at the age of 20 years.because of the rapidly growth of the world's car exports, such as South Korea and Germany exports more than 1000 cars in a year, the person in international shipping industry have predicted that, in the next 10 years, the world will build 230 Ro-Ro ships to meet market needs. Since 2007, the gap of world's automobile Ro-Ro will be even more evident. Meanwhile, the large number of ship owners has good prospects on Ro-Ro, and positively orders the ship, looking for berth to build new ship. It is predicted that in the next few years, the Ro-Ro built by shipyards will reach 30 average annual worldwide.

    Although the market prospects, domestic shipping companies don’t want to invest much money on automobile transportation. Domestic enterprises engaged in automobile Ro-Ro transport is small, and most of them do not earn money, and some companies have to lease the boat to Japanese companies. At present, there are only 12 Ro-Ro ship in China, and in Japan, Korea, Norway and other countries distinguish own 217, 72 and 87 Ro-Ro ship.

    Experts point out that at present, Chinese auto exports mainly rely on ocean shipments team of Japan, Korea and Northern Europe. By the reason of serious transport capacity and difficult order, the cost of transport will increase in a period, and decrease the competitive capacity of export. The difficult of auto export has aroused the concern of the government departments. Not long ago, the Ministry of Commerce organize FAW, Chery and other 17 automobile manufacturing companies sign 15-year strategic cooperation agreement with China Ocean Shipping Group Company to build China own Ro-Ro shipment. The two sides hope that through strategic alliances, as soon as possible to solve China's auto exports the problem of "maritime bottleneck."

    Guo Jianli, Great Wall Motor's vice present of overseas markets, said "There are many container shipping company, so the Great Wall choice have a large space to choose the container ships, and also can get a satisfactory tariff. But there is no choice of Ro-Ro, and have to relay to the foreign companies, so that the freight was not much room for negotiation. We hop to develop the domestic Ro-Ro transport, after all, in Chinese own ship, it would be better to cooperate, which is the measure to support national brands. "

    Sources said that recently COSCO will increase the number of ship from 6 to 14, and the parking space to40,000, by purchasing, building, leasing, cooperation, and other forms.