Canada's East coast container ports, do they compete with or complement one another in the race for North American container traffic? - ARCHIVED

International shipping is a highly competitve industry, especially the shipping of containers. Shipping lines are constantly trying to increase productivity by reducing costs and by attracting larger volumes of containers. In response to spiraling container freight rates, the lines have been driven to increase economies of scale. These economies are expected to be achieved through largers ships and fewer, more efficient port calls. Larger ships and client demands for frequent service have encouraged innovative alliances and pooling agreements among lines to maximize the use of this larger capacity.