BULK HANDLING

Value of comparison

13 years ago

Andrii Kuzmenko, project implementation manager at APM Terminals, questions the value of comparing gateways against transhipment hubs, or comparing terminals handling 15,000 teu vessels with up to eight ship-to-shore cranes, against those handling 3,000 teu vessels with three cranes.

"When you line up terminals attaching position numbers, that's when things go wrong," Andrii Kuzmenko, APM Terminals

“First would always be ahead of second, but what does it say about actual performance? Nothing.

“When you release any ranking, it’s obvious that ‘higher’ ports are considered to be ‘better’ than lower ports, at least for the wide public. This is misleading to some extent. With the same degree of precision you could rank terminals by number of trucks entering per minute or by average size of vessel call or by average length overall of the container vessel, or by number of calls per annum.

“All of these criteria are totally firm and measurable but in no way tell anything meaningful about a comparison of the terminal ranked N to terminals ranked N+1 or N-1.”

This leads Mr Kuzmenko to query the very value of rankings.

“If it was a case of just collecting the data and calculating averages, that would be OK, but when you line up terminals attaching position numbers, that’s when things go wrong.”