Hibiki shake-up
Illustrative of the general decline of Japanese ports, news reaches Port Strategy of severe discontent at the nations very first private port initiative.
With the results in for 2006, for the second year running no Japanese port made it into the top 20. The showcase for private investment in ports in the archipelago looks to have gone sour too.
The Hibiki Container Terminal in Kitakyushu, first mulled almost a decade ago, finally got an operating company together in 2004. However, the hugely complex shareholding structure – 10 capital investors, including PSA plus 16 partners – made for slow progress. In its first year of operation in 2005 it handled 480,000 teu – having targeted 600,000 teu.Pricing became a serious issue. According to a local source which declined to be named, the Hikibi project is now facing “imminent major surgery. “Unjustifiably low handling of containers continues to worsen the management,” says the source. “It is considered to be inevitable that the balance sheet will be reddened at the end of this fiscal year.”
Kitakyushu City,a major shareholder, has been in the process of implementing a major change in the management, operation and business practices with a view of inviting local business firms related to container transport to the project itself. By March 2007, it is expected that a new direction be cut out and there is every chance that PSA may well drop out all together from the project. From a foreigner’s point of view, Japanese port investment increasingly makes little sense.