The Asian Journal of Shipping and Logistics 34(2) (2018) 053-060 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect The Asian Journal of Shipping and Logistics Journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ajsl * This work was supported by MOST Grant 2015. A Study on the Quality Management of Containerised Grains in Asia* Taih-Cherng LIRN a , Peik BREMER b , Gi Tae YEO c , Kuo-Chung Shang d , Liu Chen Jiun e a Associate Professor, National Taiwan Ocean University,Taiwan, E-mail: tedlirn@email.ntou.edu.tw b Professor, University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt, Germany, E-mail: peik.bremer@fhws.de c Professor, Incheon National University, Korea, E-mail:ktyeo@incheon.ac.kr (Corresponding Author) d Professor, National Taiwan Ocean University,Taiwan, E-mail:gordon@email.ntou.edu.tw e Chartering Broker, M..I.T. Chartering & Agency Co., Ltd, Taiwan, E-mail: judy50625xxx@yahoo.com.tw A R T I C L E I N F O Article history: Received 15 September 2017 Received in revised form 15 February 2018 Accepted 31May 2018 Keywords: Containerized Grain Quality Management AHP Grain Logistics A B S T R A C T To make the best use of the imbalance of container flows between Asia and North America, containers are employed to carry grain cargoes from North America to Asia. Three criteria and nine sub-criteria were used to help control the quality of the grain cargoes shipped in containers. AHP technique is employed through a survey to major containerised grain cargo shippers, consignees, and ocean carriers to measure the degree of importance of the determinants influencing the quality of grains transported by containers. Without appropriate facilities and strategies, containerised grains mildewed easily during ocean voyage. Researching findings provide strategies to effectively reduce the damage rate of containerized grains cargo and improve the quality of the origin of food supply chain. Copyright © 2018 The Korean Association of Shipping and Logistics, Inc. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). 1. Introduction As the amount of agricultural land is too small to support mass production of grains in Taiwan, most of grains consumed locally are imported from abroad by dry bulk ships. In general, Taiwan imports about 7 million tons of wheat, maize, and soybean annually (see Table 1 and Figure 1). As the traffic flows between Asia, Europe, and North America are not balanced, it is found more than double the amount of containers exported from Asia to North America than from North America to Asia (see Figure 2). In the mid-2000s, containerised grain shipping became popular, as shippers found it was cheaper to move grain cargoes by containers than to http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ajsl.2018.06.002 2092-5212/© 2018 The Korean Association of Shipping and Logistics, Inc. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. Peer review under responsibility of the Korean Association of Shipping and Logistics, Inc.