If confirmation were needed,well-respected Drewry Shipping Consultants in its latest port sector report, Annual Review of Global Container Terminal Operators 2006, reveals that annual throughput capacity of the global terminal operators will hit an average yearly growth rate of 5.7% between 2005 and 2011. Against this, other private sector terminal operators will manage just 4.1% capacity growth, while average annual growth of under 3% is forecast for public sector terminals.By 2011,terminals within the global terminal operator community will account for 61% of total world capacity, compared with 58% in 2005.<\/p>\n
PortNet, an European Union project with 20 partners from 12 European countries and Russia, has also noted the increasing role of private investors in financing port infrastructure, especially in the light of increasing public funding constraints.But they also see that “timely and sufficient infrastructure financing” is one of the outstanding challenges for nearly all European ports, whether publicly owned, private or “intermediate”.<\/p>\n
Drewry’s global terminal operator ranking also makes for worthy reading. Carrier-based global terminal operators are fast expanding their port businesses. Geneva-based Mediterranean Shipping Company is now in 9th position in the league table, while the fastest rising company compared with 2004 is CMA CGM, which has jumped to 17th place, after almost trebling its total throughput to 3.4m teu.<\/p>\n
Independence day Hong Kong’s Hutchison Port Holdings is by far and away the world leader, with total volumes of 51.8m teu. APM Terminals and Singapore’s PSA are still squabbling over second place,although that may be a redundant fight by the next ranking.PSA’s purchase of a 20% stake in HPH and DP World’s P&O Ports purchase – ranked fourth in the 2005 league – will alter this year’s ranking beyond recognition. DP World has marked itself as the fastest growing container terminal business with 12.9m teu throughput in 2005, up 13% up on 2004 levels.<\/p>\n
Love them or hate them, these independent port supremos will become more and more important as the capacity crunch bites, which, as Drewry sternly warns, could manifest itself in crippling congestion and major delays in the supply chain within five years. But will the efforts of these independents be enough? It’s a sorry state of affairs that public funding in port investment comes low in the pecking order for many countries.<\/p>\n
Today, ports are on the private investors’ radar, but we all know how fickle those investors can be. One “incident” in a high-profile international terminal operator’s port could slow the rate of investment considerably. Interestingly,Drewry’s study also found that while global terminal operators are becoming more significant in terms of capacity and container throughput handled, they still have some way to go to decisively outperform other private sector organisations in terms of overall efficiency.<\/p>\n
Today, the future of ports lies in the hands of an elite few. But as container capacity shortages loom and public spending is committed on anything but ports, can these global operators meet the huge challenge being thrust at them? Complete reliance on the independents may not be appropriate in every case especially where ports function according to a cost-benefit discipline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
International terminal operators, with their wide reach, high profile branding and bottomless pockets,have fast become synonymous with successful port operations, leaving public sector terminals to be viewed as the poor relations of the port world. And with capacity shortages making sour reading for shippers, these terminal factory lines can only increase in importance in the short-term. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-2539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-viewpoint"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2539"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=2539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}