Insight and Opinion – Page 27
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News
What price Piraeus port sale?
COMMENT: Husnu Ozyegin, president of Fiba Holding, has done it again. Fiba is the owner of a 65% stake in Turkish container terminal Kumport and Ozyegin and has confirmed the sale of the Fiba group’s shareholding for a reported $940m, writes Mike Mundy.
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NewsGetting back in sync
COMMENT: In the past, I’ve sounded off about the port side of the business being out of sync with the carrier side: vessels are, frankly, way too big for terminals, writes Barry Parker.
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Port co-operation and mega-ships
COMMENT: In the, often heated, discussions on the effects of mega-ships on shoreside infrastructure, let’s include the question of co-operation between nearby ports, writes Peter de Langen.
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NewsPuerto Bahia up for sale
The next major phase of expansion of unit load traffic in the hub port of Cartagena will be at Puerto Bahia, the new dry cargo port. And the burning issue of the moment is which terminal operating company will oversee the forecast expansion.
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Getting the message out
COMMENT: Our innate ability to overtly promote ourselves as an industry means that we are failing to get the message out about the significance and the excitement of ports. We need some fresh thinking, writes Carly Fields.
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NewsIs Ukraine's optimism misplaced?
COMMENT: Your Economist recently spent two days attending a conference on container shipping and ports in Odessa, where the popular catchphrase is “victory, freedom and peace” in that order, writes Ben Hackett.
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Under one roof
COMMENT: APM Terminals has announced that it will invest more than $2bn in a new port in Nigeria, its largest single investment in a port ever.
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NewsVying for attention
COMMENT: There’s certainly been a lot of chatter around New York about infrastructure and about the local port authority, but most of the press, traditional media and online coverage has not been about maritime things. The biggest headlines have been garnered by plans for a new $4bn revamp of the ...
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NewsCracking down on Canal concerns
COMMENT: The appearance of cracks in one of the sills in the Cocoli Locks at the Pacific end of the new Panama Canal may not be the only factor to slow down the system’s full exploitation, writes Mike Mundy.
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NewsMombasa operator hiatus
COMMENT: It was originally scheduled to be announced in July but now informed sources indicate the name of the new Mombasa container terminal operator will be announced in late September/early October.
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Economic hurdles remain
COMMENT: Ports and terminals around the world are making major investments in upgrading facilities, building new ones and re-financing what they have. It seems as if there is a general belief that global trade will return to the growth paths seen before the Great Recession and that shipowners will pursue ...
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In a bubble
COMMENT: China''s having a tough time of it. While its economic slowdown is old news - shipping markets have had over a year to adjust to falling demand from the Asian juggernaut – its ports are now under scrutiny, writes Carly Fields.
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Are mega-ships such an imposition?
COMMENT: The OECD report on the effects on mega-ships provides valuable insights for all players in the port industry. While I do not wish to discuss those, I would like to focus on an – in my view - important flaw in the report: the suggestion that mega ships impose ...
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Smartening up
COMMENT: A new buzzword is tunnelling through the industry: smart. But it means very different things to different people. An interesting discussion in our LinkedIn group revealed just how diverse people’s interpretation of this simple word can be, writes Carly Fields.
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NewsAffordability of economies of scale
COMMENT: Like all things in our world we try to keep up with new trends in order not to be at a disadvantage. In economic terms this is known as comparative advantage, defined as the ability of a firm to produce goods and/or services at a lower opportunity cost than ...
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NewsCall for creative and connected thinking
COMMENT: Ports have a tangible impact on economic vibrancy, or lack thereof. If there are any doubts about this, consider the cold water thrown upon us by the recent reports coming out of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, saying that US economic growth suffered to the tune of ...
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Don’t go it alone
Consider this scenario: we have a nation that has somewhat belatedly offered its main container handling facilities for concession.
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NewsHas Gdynia missed the boat?
Traditionally Gdynia has been Poland’s main container import/export gateway but slowly and surely this status has been eroded and the recent announcement by the G6 alliance that it intends to implement calls at the Deepwater Container Terminal (DCT) Gdansk can be seen as another way step in this process.
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On the brink of change
COMMENT: 2014 was a mixed year for economic fundamentals but little of this impacted the flow of trade, writes Ben Hackett.
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NewsTime for an Optimal Size Index?
COMMENT: As this issue goes to press, the Maritime Environmental Protection Committee (MEPC) of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) will be meeting in London, writes Barry Parker.
