Analysis of obstacles to lowering demurrage at grain terminals in South Korea

This study aimed to analyze the obstacles to lowering demurrage at a grain terminal. After conducting in-depth interviews with working-level staff in grain terminal, 12 factors were selected to derive key factors for reducing demurrage. The Consistent Fuzzy Preference Relations methodology, which can extract experts’ knowledge and experiences, was employed to rank the obstacles in lowering demurrage. The analysis showed that the number one factor was “inventory requirements of grain shippers” (with an importance of 0.097), followed by “capacity of storage facilities” and “port congestion” as the second and third factors, respectively. As for sub-factors, “climate (e.g., typhoon, rain, etc.)” and “ship size” were ranked 11th and 12th, respectively. The analysis indicates that experts recognized factors that can be changed by shippers and that are difficult to control as more important obstacles than cost-related factors. The findings of this study provide the working-staff of ports, grain terminals, and the government implications for reducing demurrage.