Container Freight Station (CFS) in the simplest term, is an intermodal consolidation facility that builds up container load for export cargo and deconsolidates full container load for import cargoes. CFS is very important in a hub city, in a global physical transportation network, because of the high level activities or loading, sorting and reloading. Recently, due to the trends of globalization, customization and outsourcing of non-core activities for manufacturers, supply chain management is rapidly rising. By its vary nature, CFS can be served as a regional distribution center for MNC's inbound cargoes, a merge-in-transit facilitation along the supply chain and a supplier hub for global manufacturers. Despite the high potential of CFS for value adding or cost saving along the supply...[ Read more ]

Container Freight Station (CFS) in the simplest term, is an intermodal consolidation facility that builds up container load for export cargo and deconsolidates full container load for import cargoes. CFS is very important in a hub city, in a global physical transportation network, because of the high level activities or loading, sorting and reloading. Recently, due to the trends of globalization, customization and outsourcing of non-core activities for manufacturers, supply chain management is rapidly rising. By its vary nature, CFS can be served as a regional distribution center for MNC's inbound cargoes, a merge-in-transit facilitation along the supply chain and a supplier hub for global manufacturers. Despite the high potential of CFS for value adding or cost saving along the supply chain, CFS has received little research on its business nature, challenges and business opportunities as well as pitfalls. Therefore, we select Hong Kong's cargo-consolidation industry, named as "Container Freight Station" in particular to illustrate the issue and to explore potential research for future study.

We clearly illustrate the central role of CFS among other transportation parties, and also various important characteristics that govern the past, present and future CFS industrial development. We also illustrate the changes and challenges at this special time period such that Hong Kong's CFS cargoes are being increasingly divided by various competitive ports of in Asia, including those developing in Greater China Region. We analysis these characteristics, changes and challenges with a clear cause-and-consequence relationship graph to illustrate the whole picture.

We also design a new pricing scheme, in views of the decreasing service charges for the traditional CFS business and survey for the possibility to implement. We further illustrate the concept of new business areas to upgrade the CFS industry by utilizing her existing valuable and practical cargoes and material handling. The new business area called, "Third Party Logistics (3PL or TPL)" means the outsourcing of the traditional in-house logistics functions to a third party for cost saving and improvement purpose. This can help to convert various fixed and market-insensitive cost items, including warehouse and fleet operating and management cost to various controllable, negotiable and variable costs. We also analysis the perspectives from various parties on this 3PL potential development in Hong Kong.