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Learning Curve
01 Jan 2007
It is interesting to note that an officer of Kenya Ports Authority has suggested that congestion problems in Dar es Salaam are worse than those prevalent in Mombasa, and that as a result privatisation may not be the right road for the Port of Mombasa to go down. He suggests vessels can wait up to 10 days to get into the Port of Dar es Salaam which was the first port to achieve a fully-fledged container terminal privatisation on the African continent. Well this is the age of “spin” and maybe the real translation of this situation is that if Dar es Salaam has problems now it is quite likely to be as a result of its own success.
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A dose of collective amnesia
01 Mar 2007
The flurry of activity at shipyards, as new orders come in for ever larger containerships, appears to have no end in sight.Combine this with the increasing size of terminal operators and the need for new mega ports to cater for the China (and Indian) cargoes and we see the results of the global shift to the theory of economies of scale. Beyond any shadow of a doubt the economics of higher output to meet increasing demand is one of the fundamental lessons.
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Costly Hong Kong
01 Mar 2007
There has been much speculation on the highly unusual activity of a group of business and academic persons who, under C C Tung as convener, have been charged with making Hong Kong more competitive in the marine and logistics fields. The idea is to combine this work with that of other focus groups going on and to forward the recommendations to Beijing as part of China’s 11th Five-Year Plan.
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More trouble at the transhipment “mill”
01 Mar 2007
More labour trouble in Gioia Tauro to the extent that Contship Italia, the transhipment terminal’s operator, has issued threats about exiting the terminal. The visible cause of the problems is the newly formed union Sindacato dei Lavoratori (SdL) which claims to represent 350 of the terminal’s 650 workers and which in early February initiated a second strike lasting three days.
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Green credentials
01 Mar 2007
“Environment”is a word that will progressively burn its way into the psyche of business in the 21st century. Inevitably, with trends in motion such as global warming, there will increasingly be a balance to be struck between the requirements of business and those of preserving the environment.
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