Only the best for - Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics

A seAmless journey mAserAti
ASS VOYAGE
There are some things that simply need
special care. Any average wine, for example,
needs proper care during transit to ensure
that it arrives at a far-away destination in
good condition. But even among the better
wines, there are those very special vintages
that need an extra level of care – perhaps
even sealed up in their own protective boxes.
WorDs WilliAM J. ross PHotos ArnAud siQuet
So it was recently for luxury car maker Maserati. The Italian
manufacturer had been shipping their automobiles
to the US, its largest single market, in containers. But
in 2004 with the US launch of the newest version of its
Quattroporte, the Maserati sports sedan, they had to
face the problem of keeping the vehicles’ delivery costs effective
and to streamline their logistics operations from the factory to US
dealers.
“Before 2004 with our Coupé only, we were able to
ship up to four cars in a container,” says Vincenzo
Vinto, Logistics Manager for Maserati in Modena,
Italy, “The Quattroporte, however, is a big car,
more than five metres long, so it’s not possible
to keep the same loading factor in a 40-feet container.
Considering the sales volume increase
forecast we knew we had to investigate alternative
delivery methods for the US market.”
There were several problems. Maserati had
tried using RoRo (roll-on roll-off ) shipping, the
standard for most cars, in the past, but had found
that this resulted in too much damage.
“In fact, we had already had contact with Maserati,
and asked them, ‘Why are you still shipping in containers?’
” says Didier Verhoeven, Key Account Manager Benelux for
WWL in Zeebrugge, Belgium. “In 2005 they began to check the
possibility of using RoRo. Maseratis are low cars, but we felt that
this would give us an opportunity to overcome any lingering belief
on their part that container shipping is better, and prove that
RoRo is a superior way to ship cars. We showed them the inclination
of the ramps on our ships, and ran some test shipments.”
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