Time for true terminal alliances
As increasingly stronger shipping line alliances pile pressure on ports to bend to their demands, ports should look to play the carriers at their own partnership game, industry experts advise.
Monica Michel-Bonvalet, commercial director, Grand Port Maritime de Marseille Fos, told delegates at TOC Europe that the benefits of terminal alliances could be threefold.
“Why shouldn’t there be technical or operational alliances for terminals?” she asked. “These could benefit productivity, quality of service and the end customer.”
Neil Davidson, Drewry’s senior analyst for ports and terminals, agreed that there is a “whole spectrum of possibilities” on terminal alliances.
“On the one hand you have the possibility of two neighbouring terminal operations talking to each other about operations and learning from those discussions, and on the other you have full scale mergers or acquisitions of neighbouring terminals. There’s a whole range of alliance activity up and down that spectrum – you have to find the right point on that spectrum according to the market conditions of the individual ports and the countries involved.”
Port of Rotterdam director Joyce Bliek added that the range of co-operation between ports and terminals is “shifting”.
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