A port that offers vehicle handling without a pre-delivery inspection centre forces its customers to turn elsewhere for these activities, which adds to the cost and time it takes to get the vehicle to market. Crucially, the efficiency of the overall logistics chain is reduced, states Grimaldi managing director Emanuele Grimaldi.

This is a view shared by Luc Maertens, Zeebrugge’s port authority’s finance & economics manager: “We have five PDI centres in Zeebrugge, which we view as essential for us to stay in this business.

Mr Grimaldi goes one step further, warning that the number of port terminals that exist purely as distribution centres will inevitably reduce over time.

Grimaldi has established a major car carrying business involving both short- and deep-sea services, as well as managing several of its own dedicated car terminals. Mr Grimaldi is therefore ideally placed to comment on developments in the market in Europe. In 2006, the line transported around 1.5m units, up 10% on the previous year and a further increase of 9% is forecast for 2007.

“While we are seeing a lot of organic growth from existing customers, our business is increasing following the strengthening of our logistics network, the deployment of larger car carrying vessels with concomitant economies of scale and the launch of new regular maritime services,” comments Mr Grimaldi.

Zeebrugge, on the other hand, believes the ready availability of land is key to successful vehicle terminal development. “In order to establish a major new vehicles handling business, a port does definitely benefit from the availability of a lot of space,” says Mr Maertens.

Presently, 310 hectares are given over to this trade at Zeebrugge, with a minimum of 40 additional hectares to be added by 2008.

However, it is not simply a question of space; being price competitive is important, too, Mr Maertens adds, pointing out that port costs, such as overall charges, towage, mooring/unmooring and pilotage, are all substantially lower at Zeebrugge than for potential rivals.

Grimaldi’s own terminal strategy is one of seeking out facilities offering good service at a reasonable cost. Where common user terminals are not able to provide services commensurate with expectations, Grimaldi has opened its own facilities.

“We don't necessarily set out to own all our own terminals. However, sometimes we simply have to put in our own management team, if we are not satisfied by the quality on offer at existing facilities,” says Mr Grimaldi. “But we are happy to collaborate with incumbent operators where their mindset coincides with our own.”

Asked whether the emergence of dedicated new vehicles terminals around Europe set up by the manufacturers themselves is the way forward, Mr Maertens acknowledges that, at Zeebrugge, the establishment of a Toyota terminal has been viewed as a highly important step forward. Nevertheless, he also stresses that the port also has two terminals managed entirely by two car-carrying lines: WWL and NYK.

“It is good for ports to have not only these two different styles of dedicated terminal, but also genuine multi-user facilities that any manufacturer or shipping line can use,” he says.

Looking at capacity, Mr Grimaldi believes that European ports have sufficient capacity to cope with the large numbers of cars currently being moved around. “In general, Northern European ports have no capacity constraints, while some are even looking into expanding handling capabilities. In the Mediterranean, ports can handle current traffic levels, but improvements are needed to accommodate future growth. However, huge investment is already under way to create large ro-ro and car terminals. I am confident that port capacity will not become a bottleneck holding back future growth,” he says.

Intriguingly, while there is a perception that we are seeing a shift in production of cars from western to eastern Europe, Mr Grimaldi believes that this is still marginal. New plants in Russia, Romania and Hungary have yet to make a major impact. However, in the case of Turkey, increased production there is directly benefiting the maritime industry. The one region registering real increases in output, he says, is the Far East, where competitive labour rates are boosting production.

In respect of hub-and-spoke development, Mr Grimaldi believes that, for inbound shipments from the Far East, this practice is already common, even though hubs are comparatively small and there are lots of them. The use of larger ships, however, is reducing the number of overall port calls, with only main markets nowadays getting direct calls. As for intra-European traffic, he points out that an efficient logistics network already exists making it quick and relatively inexpensive to move new cars around.

“We are definitely seeing the emergence in Europe of the hub-and-spoke concept in new vehicles traffic, with around 410,000 cars last year considered to have been transhipped,” adds Zeebrugge’s Mr Maertens, pointing out that this could eventually result in the establishment of just a handful of hub ports rotating consignments of vehicles out to smaller ports in the region.

At Zeebrugge in 2006, rail had an overall 18% share of new vehicles movements, road one of 59% and barge 2%; the remaining 21% were rotated out by sea as transhipped units.

Since 2001, the Belgian Port of Zeebrugge has been the largest new vehicles handling facility in Europe, claiming a 25% slice of market share in the Hamburg-Le Havre range. In particular, Zeebrugge clearly benefits from its close proximity to the UK, which accounts for 35% of overall business in the port. In terms of traffic split, deepsea traffic at Zeebrugge nowadays accounts for 20 of the total.

Emden, which Zeebrugge displaced from the leading position in the new vehicles business six years ago, has a somewhat different traffic base. It mainly handles the export of Volkswagen and other German-produced vehicles, while Zeebrugge has a much more diversified overall business.