Emerging inter-industry partnerships between shipping lines and stevedores: from rivalry to cooperation?

Since late-1960s stevedoring operations assumed a dramatic importance for shipping lines, who have been securing dedicated berths for some decades. Over the last 20 years, the institutional turn in ports drove the overseas expansion of pure stevedoring companies. For quite a long time carriers and stevedores fiercely battled each other both for bargaining contractual arrangements and for securing new concessions in the key port areas. Currently this scenario is slowly changing and some early-forms of partnership are coming out. This paper analyses the different pathways through which carriers satisfy their needs of handling services. Based on 2006 data it empirically demonstrates the growing resort to such forms of cooperation both contractually and via equity ventures.