Today's trade is global. A company can choose to have its headquarters in one part of the world, its production facilities in another and sell its brands in all markets. Since the first sea-borne container transport took place in 1956, the shipping industry has been one of the main facilitators of the globalisation of trade. This book traces the rise to prominence of Maersk Line - the world's leading container operator - and the internal decision-making processes that lay behind the firm's extraordinary expansion between 1973 and 2013. With unprecedented access to company archives, interviews with current and former employees, and extensive statistical information provided by The Economist Intelligence Unit, Containerisation International and Lloyd's Register, this is a valuable resource for students of logistics, shipping or international business. This first inside account of the challenges of building a global business will also appeal to industry specialists and the general business reader.

Introducing a new methodology for measuring competitiveness in shipping ports, this analysis provides policy makers, industry practitioners, and academics with a pragmatic approach to the peculiarities of large ports around the world. Using quantitative measures as well as holistic and cultural considerations, the manual describes the general workings of the container port and shipping industry and provides in-depth case studies of ports in Southeast Asia, the Pearl River Delta, the Yangtze River Delta, and Northwest Europe.

World Development Indicators was launched in 1978 to give a statistical snapshot of the progress being made on a range of economic and social development issues and the challenges remaining, both at national level and aggregated globally. The 2005 edition of this annual publication includes over 80 tables and 800 indicators for 152 economies and 14 country groups, together with basic indicators for a further 55 economies, organised under six thematic headings, including the progress made towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Indicators cover a wide range of topics including poverty and inequality, population and migration, gender issues, health and education, housing and urbanisation, environment and sustainable development, pollution, the economy and trade, business and investment conditions. Most of the statistics are compiled from data provided by national statistical agencies. The publication is also available in CD-ROM formats for single-users (ISBN 0821360728) and multi-users (ISBN 0821360736).

Combining a sophisticated historical and theoretical analysis of the shipping industry with a practical explanation of all aspects of the shipping industry, this third edition is essential reading for students and professionals with an interest in this area.

This book maintains that container shipping is vital to the actualisation of globalisation, and that without it, globalisation would remain a concept rather than reality. It argues that container shipping has been academically overlooked as a global business sector in favour of more prominent sectors such as oil or arms trade, and aims to provide a complete history of containerisation from the 1950s to the turn of the millennium. This history explores the growth of the container industry due to prominent innovation in vessel design, early adoption of the internet, large international mergers, and significant physical alterations to the global port system. With particular emphasis on the east-west trade, the chapters cover the growth and development of the container industry, to the social changes experienced by seafaring labour forces, the cultural impact of the container - bringing a domineering land-presence to maritime activity, through to the environmental concerns surrounding the industry. The study is not a quantitative economic analysis of the industry, rather, an updated history that strives to demonstrate the importance of transport infrastructures to any consideration of global business sectors, by providing evidence of the container industry’s stimulation of the global economy.