Joining the dots
Vietnam's dreams are at last reality
February’s opening of Vietnam’s largest ever container terminal has at last crystallised the country’s true potential in the box handling market.
But the emergence of Vietnam as the ‘new China’ in manufacturing got pulses racing; throughput managed a modest 2% growth in 2009, when other terminals around the world were floundering.
So the big names circled, committed and then waited for the dream that is Vietnam to materialise. And the opening of APM Terminals port joint venture Cai Mep International Terminal suddenly makes it all real.
The facility will be the first in Vietnam able to handle the world’s largest container vessels of 11,000 teu. The hope is, of course, that fellow AP Moller-Maersk Group subsidiary Maersk Line will commit to the hub. It currently makes use of rival PSA’s terminal, but has hinted that if the price is right it will switch to CMIT.
CMIT is just one of the five new deep water terminals in the Thi Vai-Cai Mep port complex which will be operational by the end of 2011. It was started in 2009 to overcome the capacity limitations of Cat Lai and Vietnam International Container Terminal (VICT) in Ho Chi Minh City.
What the Thi Vai-Cai Mep terminals offer is close access to sea lanes and deep channels. However what they don’t yet offer is that promised concomitant improvement in infrastructure. Much of Vietnam’s containerised cargo still moves by barge to and from inland points in lieu of road and bridge construction and improvement projects.
These infrastructure improvements are crucial if these new southern hubs are to ever meet their proclaimed capacities. The point hammers home just how important it now is to view the port as a part of the whole shipping chain. State-of-the-art container handling technology on dock means nothing without the means to move cargoes to and from the terminal.
APMT, for its part, describes Asia as “a growth market”, and that “Vietnam has realised that more ports are needed”. But infrastructure issues are pressing, and now that the terminals have delivered it’s time for Vietnam to join up the dots to truly compete on a world container handling stage.
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