Gevelco DistriPort (GDP), located in the Brittanniehaven area of Rotterdam, is a 300,000 sq metre site offering state-ofthe-art facilities for handling break bulk, containerised and conventional cargoes. In terms of metals, GDP handles iron and steel products, such as coils, plates, beams, pipes, tubes and sheets.<\/p>\n
However, its speciality, according to director Fred Klein, is in the handling of weather vulnerable products such as steel or forestry products. The terminal, which opened in 2004, saw throughput for the year amounting to 800,000 tonnes, of which steel coils and sheets were the major metals products.<\/p>\n
“We developed our All Weather Terminal to shelter products being transhipped here. A storage warehouse offering humidity control for steel, for example, is directly connected to this terminal, ” explains Klein. “Of course there are other ports that compete with us in the handling of steel products, but our advantage is that no other facility has developed the same concept for handling steel that we have.”<\/p>\n
In 2005, Klein forecasts that around 1,500,000 tonnes of steel will be handled. This prediction is based on the number of new contracts GDP has closed and also on the volume of steel handled in 2004. Most of the metal products being handled are produced in Sweden, Germany, United Kingdom and the Netherlands, arriving in coasters up to 9,000 dwt, before being rotated out of the terminal on larger vessels or rail.<\/p>\n
Asked to comment on how profitable handling steel actually is nowadays, Klein points out that because GDP concentrates on the sensitive end of the market, which requires value-added touches, such traffic is clearly profitable. Furthermore, since the All Weather Terminal is a relatively new addition to the Northern European market and spent 2004 very much in its start-up phase, the overall percentage of metal products should continue to grow as more companies become aware of its existence.<\/p>\n
“We believe many potential customers will be prompted to use Gevelco DistriPort once they become aware of the value that we can add to their products, ” insists Klein.<\/p>\n
Asked whether he eventually expected steel products to be containerised, Klein notes that there are two opinions currently prevalent in the industry. One is that metals will eventually be containerised because it is easier to transport them and also cheaper to tranship them between container vessels. On the other hand, he stresses, it is difficult to containerise heavy units like coils, because they become much more difficult to handle.<\/p>\n
In terms of future plans, Klein explains that a rail distribution centre is being built to enable the terminal to offer efficient onward rail connections to any destination in Europe.<\/p>\n
“In addition, we are further developing our “industribution” warehouse for value added activities, such as cutting steel coils to the required length line or offering processing facilities for semifinished products.”<\/p>\n
Not all terminals handling steel products specialise wholly in this area, however. The Barcelona-based Mestre Group is unusual in that, despite being a major force in the port’s container handling business, it also sets aside a significant part of its Terminales de Catalunya (Tercat) box facility for the handling of metal products, even though rising container throughput is demanding ever greater space. The Group also operates a further multi-purpose terminal within the port, where coils, bars, steel plates, wire rods, scrap and ingots are all discharged, while sections and deformed reinforcing bars are both loaded.<\/p>\n
MORE PROFITABLE THAN CONTAINER HANDLING According to company spokesperson Carlos Lara, “This type of material takes up a lot of space, but is more profitable than container handling. However, the main reason why we handle metals is that we also have our own road haulage company, which is kept, in part, thanks to transporting these materials.”<\/p>\n
In 2004, around 903,000 tonnes of metals products were handled, up just slightly on the 818,000 tonnes reported the previous year. Lara points out that there had been little change in local demand, especially in the automotive industry, during last year, although 2005 is expected to boom, with up to 500,000 tonnes of scrap scheduled to arrive, bringing overall volumes of metal products to 1.3m tonnes.<\/p>\n
“Metals traffic is our most profitable, since we are highly specialist in handling it. It is also very stable, although the forecast for the next five years is for a period of growth, basically due to the opening of the new Celsa blast furnace, which will boost our scrap metals imports and allow us to export additional metal products.”<\/p>\n
Since the Mestre Group also handles forestry products and heavy machinery consignments, Lara points out that much of the Group’s handling equipment can be used across a broad range of functions, although new investment is now having to be made on specialist equipment to handle the avalanche of new scrap metal volumes.<\/p>\n
“Although we have no direct competition within the port of Barcelona, neighbouring Tarragona can compete with us because it has significant areas of available space, which Barcelona does not have. Indeed, we have had to switch some vessels to a smaller port, Vilanova y la Geltru, given the lack of space at Barcelona on occasions, ” says Lara, who nevertheless does not expect to see much of the existing metals trade containerised. “We have a steady traffic of around 10-15 containers a month each conveying two coils. However, the lashing involved is extremely complex and consignments are difficult to handle. As a result, we do not believe such shipments have much of a future.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alex Hughes talks to three steel terminals in north and south Europe finding that its about more than pure stevedoring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":6954,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-6953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-container-cargo-handling"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6953"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6955,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6953\/revisions\/6955"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6953"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=6953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}