While various potential international bidding partners were initially linked with both groups, in the event only Hutchison Port Holdings (HPH) entered the fray, agreeing to partner Tercat’s parent company, the Mestre Group, on the understanding that any longstanding agreement between them was conditional on actually winning the tender.

In fact, when the two bids were opened there was apparently very little to choose between them, but the Tercat bid was eventually deemed to be the superior.The Mestre Group (30%) and HPH (70%) subsequently put together their own management company, which will retain the Tercat branding, in preparation for the partial inauguration of the El Prat terminal on July 1, 2008.

TCB, despite the lack of a clout-wielding international partner,had nevertheless expected to win the tender, according to commercial director Miguel Duro.With just a cigarette paper seemingly separating the two bids,TCB mooted a possible legal challenge to the award, which would have seen its rival operating from a brand spanking new 930,000 sq m terminal compared with its own 560,000 sq m site.

To add insult to injury, the buy-out by Tercat reference client Maersk of TCB regular P&O Nedlloyd resulted in a serious haemorrhaging of traffic,especially given that P&O Nedlloyd had also contributed 60% of the total boxes generated by another key TCB client,the Grand Alliance.

However, the port authority realised almost immediately that it was not in its own interest to have an imbalance in the commercial potential of its two container terminals. It therefore persuaded TCB not to go ahead with its legal challenge in return for discussions to explore ways in which its established terminal could be further expanded.

As a result,TCB has been allocated additional land, some of which will be infilled from the sea and some tacked on from adjacent concessions, bringing its total operating area up to 860,000 sq m, essentially very similar to the area that Tercat will occupy at El Prat. However,investment on the part of TCB will be much less than would have been the case if it had won the concession to operate on El Prat quay. Furthermore, TCB’s existing terminal area, which was infilled from the sea, has now settled and is an essentially stable operating environment.

This latter point is crucial, since the El Prat development hit the headlines recently for all the wrong reasons following the partial collapse of the newly completed quayside, which Tercat’s commercial director Charles Baker conceded might upset the phased transfer of services to the new terminal as from July 1, 2008.

If the material used to infill the new terminal area has not settled sufficiently for the move to go ahead, then Tercat, which plans to introduce automated rail mounted gantries, may be stuck at its increasingly crowded location on Muelle Principe de España that much longer.

In the meantime, the port authority has called in consultants to review construction of the new quay. Their report, which is due out in July, should make interesting reading.

Notwithstanding the possibility of a delay in getting the new terminal up and running, the port of Barcelona will inevitably find some sort of solution to whatever problem the consultants uncover. When eventually both Tercat and TCB are able to compete head-to-head for available traffic at their expanded sites, there is no doubt that it will be the port,as a whole,that will benefit.

Barcelona is already arguably the most productive container port in the Mediterranean, averaging at least 25 moves-per-crane-hour, which is easily five moves more than being achieved in Valencia and much better than figures logged by Marseilles. Indeed, both Miguel Duro and Charles Baker are convinced that, with the imminent putting into service of a European gauge rail link to both Madrid and France, the port should be able to carve out quite a significant future role as a major regional hub serving southwest Europe and North Africa.