MORE than 130 years after the Calcutta Steam Traffic Conference was set up by shipping lines in an effort to stabilise freight rates in the Europe-India trades, these price-fixing associations are about to vanish, at least in Europe.

The Trans-Atlantic Conference Agreement has just held its final meeting, and the Far Eastern Freight Conference will close in October on the eve of the Brussels deadline. Many others have already quietly closed.

European shippers, who have waged a long campaign against conferences, convinced they artificially inflated freight rates, have won a famous victory.

Container lines will no longer set prices together, or manage capacity. Most accept that conferences are past their sell-by date. They made good sense when individual shipowners were too small to operate longhaul scheduled services on their own. These days, global carriers are large enough to operate independently, or can share space through consortia without any price collaboration.

But after decades of working together, this transition will not be easy for the lines, and innocent mistakes may happen. Neither will shippers find it as straightforward as they seem to imagine. How long will it be before some start asking ocean carriers for a common bunker or currency surcharge because of the complexity of dealing with so many different figures?

Both sides will need to show some understanding and flexibility as they move into the uncharted territory of a world without conferences. Wouldn’t it be nice to think that the antipathy and suspicion of the past two decades will finally evaporate?