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Jean-Paul Rodrigue and Theo Notteboom's The Containerization of Commodities

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Discuss the Article "The Containerization of Commodities" at
http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch3en/appl3en/ch3a2en.html

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2241 words with many references gives a reaction to an article entitled "The Containerization of Commodities" by Jean-Paul Rodrigue and Theo Notteboom. Attached in Word also.

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The Containerization of Commodities
Below summarizes the article while the following section of this guide discusses and analyzes several related articles and my own point of view on Jean-Paul Rodigue and Theo Notteboom's The Containerization of Commodities and the several articles I selected and used as references. Please remember that this is a guide and not something that can and should be passed on for class requirements.
Summary of Article
The article by Jean-Paul Rodigue and Theo Notteboom, The Containerization of Commodities, aims to study the increasing importance of containerization in the movement of commodities. As they point out, integrating containerization into this movement will not be easy, but for transportation companies that take up the challenge, the financial reward may be worth the efforts.
The authors opine that the increasing importance of containers as a distribution channel for commodities makes this transport option deserving to be considered, studied and analyzed as an integral part of a company's supply chain. Moreover, in the point of view of companies providing container transport, the authors observed that conventional growth that has fed containerization may no longer be relied for demand for container services; hence, these companies need to look at the business of containerization of commodities, which has a lot of potential to be developed as a niche market.
In identifying what commodity such as grains, chemicals, and wood products to containerize, there is a need to study the degree of market penetration of containerization of that commodity. For example, Rodrigue and Notteboom (2013) mentioned that "95% of all European coffee imports are containerized since coffee is a commodity of high value and its consumption rather ubiquitous and of mass market level" (n.p.). It may be then beneficial for a transport company to look for a commodity that is high value and with similar consumption characteristics as coffee, the containerization of which still in infancy.
Though containerization of commodities is now as ubiquitous as containerization itself, as Rodrigue and Notteboom (2013) mentioned, there are challenges that are unique in themselves. These challenges include 1) where the containers are located and their load capacity, 2) process of preparing the containers to suit the commodity to be transported, 3) how these containers are loaded into and unloaded from the transport, and transloading, and 4) weight of the load and weigh distribution.
Transloading may perhaps be the most challenging when it comes to controlling the cost of providing the containerization of commodities service. When we say transloading, it means the transport of the container from the "gateway ports [to] inland terminals" (Rodrigue & Notteboom, 2013).
Fortunately it is unlikely that the increasing containerization of commodities will cannibalized existing bulk commodities; hence, integrating this business into the containerized freight distribution system will make a lot of business sense. As Rodrigue and Notteboom (2013) conclude, "there is substantial potential for growth in the usage of containers to carry various commodities on global markets."
In conclusion, the containerization of commodities is an inevitable happening in the transportation industry as industry players search of new and additional sources of revenues.
Discussion and Analysis
In general the global supply chain has drastically changed in the past few decades (Tan & Hilmola, 2012, n.p.) in both scope and depth, and this change has never ...

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