Insight and Opinion – Page 28
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News
Forward plan to manage transitions
COMMENT: In Antwerp, the closure of the GM plant makes a huge site available for re-development, while in Rotterdam, one of the refineries (currently owned by Q8) is up for sale, writes Peter de Langen.
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NewsPlayground of the alliances
COMMENT: Over the past twelve months the container business has been turned on its head with shifting alliances, the arrival of the mega-ships and an ordering spree with enough capacity to make a grown man cry.
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NewsUnder the microscope
COMMENT: Just how much ports are under the microscope nowadays when they are located close to a city or populated areas is highlighted by the recent experience of Associated British Ports’ (ABP) port of Southampton, writes Mike Mundy.
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News
Sound the trumpet
COMMENT: There’s nothing like a bit of pressure to really push boundaries. In the case of APM Terminals, most of that pressure is of its own making when it comes to its Maasvlakte II terminal, writes Carly Fields.
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NewsBelief in Canadian container prospects
COMMENT: Last month, DP World bought the Maher terminal in Prince Rupert, with a 2014 throughput of a little over 600,000 teu for more than a half billion US dollar - just under $1,000 per teu handled, writes Peter de Langen.
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News
Just who's laughing now?
COMMENT: Reading the press since the end of the labour dispute on the US West Coast brings a smile to one''s lips. The build-up of the West Coast congestion was relatively slow, as the ILWU and the PMA were locked in negotiations and shippers and carriers worked on how to ...
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NewsCarriers disconnect needs serious thought
COMMENT: What will the world of containerships look like in 2020? Or 2025? If you take the pronouncements of Boston Consulting Group (BCG) as gospel most of the big liners will have consolidated, and there will be one super-duper high-tech salt mine to handle all the vagaries of back office ...
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Allaying ‘Big Brother’ fears
COMMENT: From last October, the UK Driver Vehicle Licensing Agency no longer requires UK vehicle owners to exhibit on their respective vehicles a ‘tax disc’ – a unique piece of paper which basically tells all and sundry - not least marauding traffic wardens - that you have paid for your ...
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News
Out of sight
COMMENT: Statisticians claim that a ship arrives or departs Singapore every two to three minutes. Normally, you need to take statistics of that ilk with a pinch of salt and ask what a port authority might stand to gain from artificially inflating that figure.
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News
Piraeus farce
The on-off nature of the concession plans for the port of Piraeus has become something of a joke since the Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras and his coalition party took office In January.
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NewsA public-public partnership?
COMMENT: Irony of ironies, in among the host of bidders whose names appear in conjunction with the privatisation of the Mombasa container terminal is Transnet, the government body responsible for the management and operation of South Africa’s ports, writes Mike Mundy.
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News
Don't downplay trust issues
COMMENT: The OECD recently published a report with a global outlook on freight transport - the Freight Outlook 2015 - including a forecast for the volumes handled by ports in various regions of the world, but can it be trusted, asks Peter de Langen.
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NewsLimits of economies of scale
COMMENT: We have long believed that economies of scale are the saviour of the maritime industry, for all sectors ranging from terminals and bulk, to tankers and containerships. But in the last few months we have begun to hear opinions suggesting that containerships have reached their maximum size. So, wherein ...
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News
Cruise not so detached from cargo
COMMENT: The cold weather here in New York of late drove me down to Florida for some warmth, where I was fortunate enough to attend a conference on the cruise busines, writes Barry Parker.
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NewsTranshipment opportunity
COMMENT: Not all container transhipment takes place at the mega hubs such as Singapore, Tanjung Pelepas, Busan, Algeciras, Malta Freeport and so on. It can also take place as a healthy adjunct to gateway port operations – import and export activity – unless of course bureaucracy gets in the way.
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News
Fight for survival
So the US West Coast labour hullabaloo is finally over. It took Obama’s loan of US secretary of labour Thomas Perez to help broker a deal after a federal mediator failed to find common ground between the two sides. Perez’s imposition of a deal deadline saw both sides jump to ...
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NewsCosco ordered to pay back Piraeus EU aid
COMMENT: Just as Piraeus concessionaire Cosco re-found its favour with the new Greek authorities, the fraught relationship is under pressure yet again, this time by European Commission interjections, writes Carly Fields.
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News
All change in the eurozone
COMMENT: A change of fiscal strategy for the Eurozone began with the Swiss de-coupling from the Euro, followed by the injection of €60bn a month for up to 18 months into the Eurozone economies and the change of government in Greece, writes Ben Hackett.
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NewsA proposition with handcuffs
COMMENT: The Dock Workers Union, the union which represents the majority of workers at the port of Mombasa, Kenya, has stated that it now supports the idea of offering a concession to the private sector for the new 450,000 teu container terminal under development, but only if this first phase ...
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NewsThe future is the past
COMMENT: do you think it is a wise strategy to curtail talks with a group of influential investors by announcing it to the media, asks Mike Mundy.
