Third world North American ports slammed

Speaking at the JOC conference in London this week, Franck Kayser, vice president of network operations at United Arab Shipping Company, described North America as “a strong world power with third world ports that are not efficient”.

“You primarily find poor performing ports in the Mediterranean and North America,” he said, blaming lacklustre leadership structure for many of the problems.

Mr Kayser went on to accuse Italy of “falling asleep”, questioning why some national ports struggled to make 30 moves per berth when they have the same equipment and infrastructure as other better performing ports outside of the country.

“It’s a happy day when you have berth productivity of 50 moves per hour, but most often you are at 30-40 moves per hour. It’s archaic and just not good enough,” he said.