Following an agreement between the Victorian Government and the Opposition, the Delivering Victorian Infrastructure (Port of Melbourne lease) Bill 2015 was passed in March, with an estimated A$6bn (US$4.55bn) to be generated for the state.<\/p>\n
The agreement was a relief to business leaders.<\/p>\n
Australian Logistics Council managing director Michael Kilgariff said the agreement on clauses to compensate incumbent operators (should a future government support the development of a competing second port in Victoria), paved the way for the long-term lease process to begin.<\/p>\n
Australian Peak Shippers\u2019 Association chief executive Robert Coode said safeguards had been put in place to ensure users of the port were protected from vertical integration and price gouging.<\/p>\n
Some observers however have underlined the major challenges Melbourne still faces. At the Asia Intermodal conference in Melbourne, Ocean Shipping Consultants director Andrew Penfold warned much longer vessels are being deployed in global trades, and the ability to handle these would be critical.<\/p>\n
He said Melbourne would be in danger of losing market share if it cannot berth vessels in the region of 8,000-9,000 teu that the market is pushing to introduce into the Australian trades.<\/p>\n
Drewry port economist David Bayne argued the port was in danger of becoming obsolete, with shipowners perturbed by restrictions on ship size, and felt that DPW Australia and Patrick Asciano, who operate from Swanson Dock, would be looking for improvements to accommodate bigger ships.<\/p>\n
Webb Dock\u2019s new leaseholder, International Container Terminal Services, says the port privatisation debate focused on compensation clauses when the real need is to focus on the ability to handle larger ships. ICTSI is prepared to spend A$150m (US$114m) to enhance berths so that two large ships can berth at once.<\/p>\n
The corporation has advised ICTSI its only option is to discuss this with the future owner of the port.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The long-running political impasse over the future of the Port of Melbourne has finally been resolved with the Parliament of Victoria passing legislation to privatise the port. However, market observers believe Melbourne has major challenges ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":4454,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-4453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oceania"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4453","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=4453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4455,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4453\/revisions\/4455"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4453"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=4453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}