For us, an interesting by-product of swelling containerships is innovation on the part of certain containerports on determining windows of vessel access. Notably, studies have been initiated in certain north European river ports such as Antwerp with the aim of predicting vessel loadings and therefore actual vessel draught with a view to improving windows of vessel access.<\/p>\n
The research is driven by various factors, not least the inability to dredge to keep pace with the increased draught of top-of-therange vessels. There is also the desire to remain competitive with coastal ports who offer easy access and appreciation of the reality that on many liner services vessels are rarely fully loaded in terms of the draught they employ.<\/p>\n
For instance, in the Far East-north Europe trade while container capacity may be fully utilised, the nature of the cargo being carried inbound from Asia is such that vessels are usually not employing their maximum draught. Equally, this trade is an imbalanced trade – of which there are many more now around the world – and as such the north Europe-Asia trade is also unlikely to be one where vessels draw their full draught.<\/p>\n
And then operational realities come into the equation. In north Europe, for example, Rotterdam is invariably the first port of call partly due to its very deep draught. After leaving Rotterdam it is clear that a vessel will be significantly lightened and hence why treat it as though it is down to its marks at subsequent north European ports of call such as Antwerp, Hamburg or Bremerhaven, all river ports operating with tidal windows?<\/p>\n
Within the predictability process there will doubtless be numerous checks built in to ensure maritime safety and given that this is the case it appears to offer interesting promise regarding maintaining vessel access to certain ports despite the introduction of larger, deeper draught designs.<\/p>\n
There are also other spin-off benefits, a reduced capital dredging requirement means reduced expenditure and less dredging means less damage to the environment.<\/p>\n
The predictability process may be looked at sceptically by traditional marine interests – and so it should be in the first instance – but with powerful IT systems supporting it, it could yet prove to be a major tool via which to maximise returns from existing port resources.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The thirst for ever larger containerships is seemingly never quenched. Last month, the gleaming Emma Maersk sashayed on to the market with its declared 11,000 teu capacity – and whispers of a real capacity of more than 13,000 teu.<\/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":[94],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-6971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-viewpoint"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6971","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=6971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6971\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6971"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=6971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}