A new generation of containerships: cause or effect of the economic development?

For years, and more and more insistently, globalization of economy and world trade is a common concept which is in all communications media. Nevertheless, freight market and shipbuilding have been traditionally globalized markets. Does it mean that nothing has happened to these sectors? Of course, not. The globalization of the world trade has had and is having a crucial effect on shipping and shipbuilding, as it can be seen in the growing sizes of the vessels used in the transport. The development of the international trade and its extension to a world scale has determined an important and generalized change in the industrial structures and in the distribution of products. In particular, the generalization of the containerisation of the general cargo has developed an efficient and economic transport that has allowed its multiplication and, as a consequence, the delocalisation of numerous industries. Some changes have been determinant in this sense: The shifting of carriers´ strategy from a port to port procedure to a door to door system, the generalisation of intermodalism, the progressive containerisation of commodities traditionally carried as bulk cargoes, the economies of scale, the maintenance and even the reduction of freight rates. All these characteristics imply the worldwide movement of a huge number of commodities (raw materials, parts, semi-finished products, etc.) which have to be brought together and assembled wherever is cheapest, as a consequence of the globalization of production facilities. In this paper, the most important effects of this apparently uncontrollable unstoppable change will be analysed, as well as its main consequences on shipping and the size of the ships.