Noteworthy, the Thai government has awarded the Laem Chabang’s container- terminals to private operators for the long-term concession, an average of 30 years.
This strategy seems quite well in efficiency of handling services, both in terms of costs of handling and laying time. Some executives of shipping lines affirmed this.
However, the analysis of this thesis, on the competitive advantages of Laem Chabang’s performance in comparing to its rivals of neighbouring countries i.e. Klang, Manila, and Tanjung Priox container port, has demonstrated some remarkable findings in a rather complicated process. Hence, the following sections describe a detail of implications of container industry’s environments and competitive advantages analysis of container ports in Thailand and the Southeast Asian region.
In terms of politics, it is well for Thailand’s container shipping. This is because of the Thai government needs to promote the maritime industry in many approaches in order to improve the whole system of the country’s international trade. Specifically, the multimodal transport linkage development policy of the Thai government is also beneficial to container ports as well. As one of the threats to Thai inland container’s marketing position is neighbouring rivals i.e. Klang and Da Nang, thus the development policy of multimodal transport will bring some competitive edge for Laem Chabang’s market shares of behind-land cargoes.
Thai government’s marketing and customs’ free zone strategies are potential to attract more main liners calling directly at Laem Chabang container port by larger ocean vessels e.g. panamax and post-panamax sizes with fixing time-window. Some bilateral free trade agreements between Thailand and other countries, such as India, Australia, and China, are the instances of government marketing policy in which the role of Laem Chabang as the main container gateway of the country is increasing at the same time.
The customs’ free zone is another strategy that increases the derived demand for transporting raw material, intermediate industrial and finished manufactured products.
This is because of the number of foreign direct investments of manufacturing affiliates in Thailand have been increased due to the relief of importing and exporting taxes and duties for products move into or manufactured in a free zone industrial site.
Additionally, the country’s growing wealth is fuelling much greater demand for the import of vehicles manufactured oversea, in particular European brands that are currently not manufactured in Thailand.
5.2.2 EXTERNAL THREATS
From the results of both quality and quantitative analysis of Laem Chabang’s external threats, it found that the situation is destructing the competitive margin of Laem Chabang container market position. In terms of market share’s competition, it is a strong threat to the status quo position of Laem Chabang.
According to the cooperation of development projects, i.e. the two projects of route construction between Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, These projects will become the new gateways of land transportation between the three countries. However, the best opportunity seems to incline to Da Nang port of Vietnam quite obviously. It is not an over illustration of panic but based on the demand utility of shippers. Hence, it does not so far for increasing the level of competition for containerized cargo volume in the region.
Also, some market shares of the Southern parts of Thailand’s products are shaking by transferring pass through the Southern border of Thailand to the Klang port of Malaysia. The present reality is that inland transport providers operating from Malaysia are currently putting their efforts into enticing Thai shippers to ship via Port of Klang by offering a lower freight rate, particularly for those shippers in the South of the country. This flaw cannot be disregarded even though the impact is not so fierce now.
The threat of high price of crude oil in the world market has much impact to Thai transportation system. Approximately 80 percent of crude is imported and this certainly affects the expected economic target of container operators as well, either in terms of volume or operating costs. Thailand is more suffer by the impact of the world’s market price of crude than the neighbouring countries.
5.2.3 INTERNAL STRENGTHS
Even though there is a threat of external challenges from neighboring countries to the competitive edge of Laem Chabang, risks of that challenging can be reduced in some scales relative to some internal strengths of Laem Chabang itself.
The followings are strengths supporting the competitive advantage level of the Laem Chabang: (1) “Services Dimension”, as mentioned before, Laem Chabang container port has been, by the government policy, promoted to be the principal container port of Thailand. This is undoubtedly has been a decisive factor of the country’s seaborne trade internationally. As a consequence, the establishment of Lad Kraband ICD derived by the special support of the government policy has acted as the inland
container freight station of Laem Chabang container port definitely. It is most facilitated to the owners of containerized cargo and the shipping liners. It has also linked the Laem Chabang container port directly by road and rail modes.
By the distance of about 85 kilometres to/from Laem Chabang and vice versa, it leads to a sound economy in transporting cost obviously. Hence, the Laem Chabang has been most advantage by the operation of Lad Krabang ICD both for unloading and loading cargo to containers; (2) “the advantage of local human resources” based on the data obtained from interviewing two operating operators of shipping companies, they confirmed the high quality of skilled of container terminal labourers.
This is, in average, the strong local human resources of the Laem Chabang and has been internationally accepted. In addition, the location of Laem Chabang is obviously, by past experiences and geographic engineering, is freed from natural disasters such as earthquake and heavy storm.
5.2.4 INTERNAL WEAKNESSES
In present day, Laem Chabang has faced an objection from an immediate area. The disagreement on the economic returns incurring by the operations of Laem Chabang port by some groups of communities adjacent to the port site is under going. They see rather that the establishment and future expansion projects of the port will destruct their standard of private living. Also, private individual environmentalists have argued on the issues of water pollution and destruction of coastal sea animals, caused by the operation of the port. This problem is likely to consume some costs and period of time.
In terms of management and direction, some government’s agents who have been in charge of port services have practiced in a manner of malfunctions. This sometimes led to the problem of unfair manipulations complained by some individuals of shippers and shipping lines (data from interviewing).
Furthermore, the disobedience of the Labour Union of State-Enterprises, for the government policy in relating to the program of full privatization of state enterprises
including the Port Authority of Thailand, has caused the inefficiency of some parts of container port performance.
Finally, the container terminal operators in Laem Chabang are all under long-term contraction to private operators. This resulted in a difficulty in terms of the unpredicted regulation adjustment that needs to solve some constraints of the terminal services. This is because of the bargaining power of the government agents is less than the terminal operators.
Next section describes the relative implications of competitive advantages of Laem Chabang container port from the results of empirical analysis in chapter four.