Mr Vertongen explains that the move has been sparked partly by market timing. \u201cThere are good deals to be had if you have the money,\u201d he says, and Antwerp has, it seems, the cash to go ahead.<\/p>\n
But it may also have been a sense of possibilities slipping by. The PAI came from Antwerp\u2019s original consulting arm and Mr Vertongen says that while Antwerp got involved in tenders and projects around the world, \u201cwe were conscious that our involvement stopped at the consulting hours\u201d, and so the (then) Antwerp Port Consultancy felt more could be gained \u201cby becoming players in the next level\u201d. In the next few months the PAI is looking to recruit new people with economic and technical qualifications to support its new aim.<\/p>\n
While the new body won\u2019t stop its consulting activities, the PAI will now be looking at acquiring stakes in foreign port projects with a reliable rate of return, located in strategically important regions such as the Middle East, India, Sub-Saharan Africa, Vietnam and Brazil. \u201cThese are areas where we have either very clear ambitions or long standing relationships \u2013 like Africa \u2013 with whom we have very developed services.\u201d He adds that it isn\u2019t exclusive, and PAI will of course look at interesting projects in other areas on both greenfield or brownfield projects. One aim, of course, is to funnel cargo back to Antwerp.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, Mr Vertongen says that \u201cthe landlord model remains our starting point, although there will need to be a certain degree of flexibility, depending on the project.\u201d He adds PAI is very interested in collaboration with both public authorities and other private companies, such as port operators, shipping lines, consultancy firms or project developers in varying combinations. For each project it will be necessary to choose the most appropriate form of collaboration, he explains.<\/p>\n
However, he is keen to add that the PAI will not challenge Antwerp\u2019s core business \u2013 \u201cWe don\u2019t want to become the competitors of Antwerp\u2019s own clients. There are plenty of other things to do,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Antwerp has just announced it has its eye on acquiring stakes in foreign projects, and Nico Vertongen, a director of Antwerp\u2019s newly created subsidiary, Port of Antwerp International (PAI), tells Port Strategy why.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":7928,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-7927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7927","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=7927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7927"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=7927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}