Return on investment in spreaders

Growth has a way of making problems go away, and for many years container handling has been a growth business. Yet history reminds us that challenging times arrive sooner or later in every industry, and container handling will be no exception.

When global trade eventually slows, terminal efficiency and productivity will be more important than ever before. A less reliable spreader fleet costs more, of course – in repairs, downtime expense, and extra capital allocation for spares. Yet the greatest "cost" of spreader under-performance is how a less productive spreader fleet makes a terminal less competitive. Highly efficient terminals have a marketing advantage over peers – which over time will mean higher market share, better berth utilization, and superior pricing power.

This is why the selection of a spreader partner is always a strategic activity. The decisive difference between competing spreaders is not the difference in initial purchase price, but how spreader fleet out-performance or under-performance impacts speed of ship turns, terminal TEU growth, berth utilization, lifecycle costs, and overall customer satisfaction. These are the "big picture" issues that success ultimately depends on – the issues that will determine which terminals will compete and win, and which terminals will plateau or decline, in the container terminal marketplace of the future.

As such, identifying the spreader partner most likely to maximize return on investment is at the center of fleet planning. Yet, how does a terminal do this? How does a terminal properly balance competing indexes of value – initial spreader price, lifetime energy and maintenance costs, fleet durability, and spreader productivity?

How does one move from the easy question:

   – "What will this spreader cost us?"

to the more important question:

   – "What will this spreader earn for us?"

How does a terminal calculate where true value resides in the spreader marketplace?

Bromma Group’s new white paper - Return on Investment in Spreaders – is an exploration of these questions, and a useful tool for developing a more strategic approach to fleet investment. The white paper can also help your terminal develop a return-on-investment model tailored to your specific operating environment and growth ambitions.

Vikram Raman, VP Commercial Management, can be reached at vikram.raman@bromma.com, or by calling +46 8 620 09 38.