SINGAPORE: Jeremy Nixon, Chief Executive Officer – ONE recently updated on the ONE Initiative at the end of Q2 FY2022 by saying that, “The global economy continues to come under pressure from high energy costs, rising interest rates and inflation. Whilst supply chain bottlenecks continue to impact some geographies and industry sectors. A case in point is the latest Ningbo city lock-downs in China and continued inland rail congestion in the USA. Overall though, inland and port logistics fluidity continues to improve. Consumer confidence is however more subdued and some retailers have reduced their current purchase orders whilst sitting on higher levels of inventory. October is structurally a relatively weak month (Golden Week holidays in PRC) and so this and the wider weaker confidence in consumer sales has led to a recent drop in booking demand across a number of key trade lanes. This has led to a sharp correction in spot market rates, due to overall demand dropping quicker than the market can adjust supply side capacity. This situation however is likely to change over the next quarter as the market moves back closer to equilibrium, albeit at lower market volumes and rate levels compared with this time last year. Inevitably surplus inventories will need to get cleared out to accommodate the influx of seasonal specific commodities and purchase orders for the next calendar year.”
Enhancing the Customer Journey
“In addition to stabilising our port to port transit times and on time network arrival times, ONE is also focusing on enhancing its end to end customer service experience.
We have now fully rolled out our Sales Cloud, so all customers are mapped internally to specific onshore staff members and account teams to look after their commercial and servicing requirements at both origin and destination. We are also now rolling out our Service Cloud, so that all our frontline “customer care agents” are globally connected and linked directly to their associated account teams.
It means that interactions by chat, phone and email are fully integrated, and key issues can be quickly escalated and resolved more clearly at a local, regional and global level. This month we also launched our enhanced “ONE QUOTE” platform so that our non contract customers can access and book freight online with ONE more easily. Our Mobile App also is getting a strong take-up as we continue to enhance its features and functionality.
Decarbonising our Supply Chain
“We recognise that ONE’s scope one emissions are our customers scope three emissions. So if we can decarbonise shipping we can decarbonise the world. ONE recently ordered ten new vessels (13K) for delivery in 2025, which initially will be designed to operate on conventional fuel oil, but can then be retroactively fitted to operate on green methanol or green ammonia when these fuel types become commercially available later this decade. We are also participating in a number of R&D projects to accelerate innovation and reduce the carbon intensity of both our current and future fleet. This includes the retrofitting of some of our larger vessels with bow deflectors to improve their aerodynamics whilst underway.
Reconnecting
“The last quarter has seen significant progress in the roll back of Covid 19 travel restrictions in many geographies. This has been a good opportunity to “reconnect” with many of our customers, staff and business partners on a “face to face” meeting basis, and get back on track from where we left off over two years ago. We all realise the importance of human interaction and unfettered discussion can never be underestimated. As a result, we also hosted all our senior regional leadership teams this month here in Singapore, to not just “reconnect” as a team, but also set out our joint forward planning for next year, including the further enhancement of ONE’s “customer journey”.
