The ports of Rotterdam and Hamburg have started undertaking “unprecedented levels of collaboration”, the two facilities revealed at TOC Europe 2018.
Speaking at the Rotterdam event, Joyce Bliek, digital business solutions director at the Port of Rotterdam, said that in the last couple of months, Rotterdam and the Port of Hamburg had shared port call data to attempt “to optimise port calls of the shipping lines in the North Europe area.
“We are now at the stage of connecting systems, even though we are two competing ports,” Ms Bliek explained, adding that a change in mindset was needed.
It is understood that the venture was based on a request from Maersk Line, which had asked the two ports how sharing vessel movement and other port data could help it improve running of its vessels between the two facilities.
“We were pushed but were happy to oblige, and it has proved to be a really fruitful combination between ports and a major customer,” Ms Bliek said.
Vessel optimisation schemes were already underway at both the Port of Rotterdam, located in the Netherlands, and the Port of Hamburg, located in Germany, with Rotterdam having recently gone live with its Pronto system (which allows different parties to share port call-related information) and Hamburg having recently developed a new passage plan programme to advise ships on the best course, speed and approach from the mouth of the Elbe river to its facilities.
Linking together the two systems and making the data available to vessel operators has been the key pillar of the two ports’ recent collaboration, according to a release.
HVCC Hamburg Vessel Coordination Center managing director Gerald Hirt said that bringing other ports into an emerging network would now be sought.
“This is not a closed shop — we would like to invite other ports to join us,” he said.
During TOC Europe, APM Terminals chief operating officer Keith Svendson called for much more terminal industry collaboration to address a lack of data standardisation.
