In comparison, the neighbouring DP World operation in Dubai lost around 6% of its box traffic.<\/p>\n
Gulftainer, which operates Khorfakkan Container Terminal (KCT) and Sharjah Container Terminal (SCT) on behalf of Sharjah Port Authority, says 2010 is promising to be even better \u2013 commercial manager Keith Nuttall forecasts growth of 15-20% compared to last year.<\/p>\n
However, trying to tease out exactly why Sharjah has been so successful is not easy, since Mr Nuttall is unable to pinpoint one single factor to explain why its performance has been so much better than that of rivals. He says a whole raft of factors should be considered.<\/p>\n
First and foremost, Sharjah is fortunate to be surrounded by economies that have bucked the global downturn. Feeders out of KCT serve ports in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq, all of which have been less directly affected by the recession than other countries.<\/p>\n
South Asian ports, such as Mumbai and Karachi, also have extensive links with KCT, with both India and Pakistan hit less hard. Even more recently, a vessel collision at Mumbai resulted in larger ships having to be diverted to Sharjah because of temporary draught restrictions.<\/p>\n
Volumes on African services have been similarly less impacted by the crisis in the global banking sector than others in more developed areas.<\/p>\n
But as Mr Nuttall explains, it is not just a case in being situated in the right location; others factors have come into play, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn order to retain major shipping lines, we, and \u2013 with great foresight \u2013 the government and Port Authority of Sharjah, made the decision several years ago to undertake major investment, especially in KCT,\u201d he says. \u201cThis was at a time when today\u2019s largest vessels were not yet off the drawing board. However, even then, we had spotted that there was definitely an emerging trend towards deploying larger vessels, so decided to undertake the investment needed to ensure we could handle them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The result has been a doubling of the working area at KCT, which has a draught of more than 16 m. At the same time, new super post-panamax gantry cranes were acquired, bringing to 20 the number now operated by the terminal. Since these are equipped with tandem-lift spreaders, productivity of 40-50 moves per crane hour is now common; lines report that KCT is perhaps the world\u2019s most productive container terminal, says Mr Nuttall.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe base this solely on feedback from shipping lines using our terminal, he stresses. \u201cNowadays, we have the equipment to cope with any vessel of any size that any shipping line might like to send here and we can probably handle it faster than anybody else on the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other terminals in the Gulf region have similar cranes, and tandem-lift is relatively common, but few other operators are able to achieve the same productivity benchmarks claimed by Gulftainer at Sharjah. Mr Nuttall says this degree of excellence is a reflection of the quality of the workforce it employs.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring the recession, other terminals often cut jobs and lost numerous experienced workers as a result. That meant making more use of casual labour on an ad hoc basis. Our philosophy was just the opposite: we hung on to our most experienced people and that has paid dividends, explaining in part why we are so productive.\u201d<\/p>\n
KCT, Mr Nuttall concedes, does also benefit from being a compact terminal. Despite being expanded in the past two years, the stacking yard remains comparatively close to the quay, so boxes don\u2019t have to be transported vast distances. Large vessels, such as CMA CGM\u2019s 13,800 teu Christophe Colomb, which made a recent call, can therefore be turned around in record time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith many shipping lines now operating a slow steaming policy to save money, it\u2019s not in our interest, nor in theirs, to have really large ships laid up in port for an extensive period of time. It therefore makes sense to rotate them out of KCT as fast as possible and we do everything we can to achieve that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gulftainer achieved something highly unusual in 2009: while other terminals in the Middle East were losing traffic, it actually boosted throughput at its two Sharjah terminals, by around 10%, to 2.75m teu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":8077,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-8076","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\/8076","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=8076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8076"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=8076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}