ViewPoint – Page 5
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Groundhog day
Third time’s a charm? Not for the European Port Services Regulation. For 15 years, the European Commission has been trying to regulate the bloc’s port industry, with no success.
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All-rounder regulations
COMMENT: Ballast water isn’t the sexiest thing to talk about in shipping, writes Carly Fields.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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Fight or flight?
COMMENT: Just as the goalposts came into view, the Chinese have seen their port privatisation dreams in Greece not just moved but completely dismantled and removed from the field, writes Carly Fields.
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NewsIs there a case for penalties?
COMMENT: I was recently in the audience of an animated conference discussion about the pros and cons of introducing rewards and penalties at ports handling containers. It was an interesting debate, but it left me feeling sceptical about whether such a scheme could work, writes Carly Fields.
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NewsTime for a touch of humanity
COMMENT: A life at sea is not the glamorous posting that it used to be. Long stretches away from family and friends, limited social cohesion because of a lack of common language and risk of attack or even hijack in some parts of the world, writes Carly Fields.
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NewsManila shows how not to do it
COMMENT: It’s a mess in Manila: empty boxes have been left to languish on the docks, trucks have been blocking up the highways and extreme, disconnected measures have caused a catalogue of knock on effects, writes Carly Fields.
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NewsPorts must be prepared for every eventuality
COMMENT: It seems like it was only yesterday that we were discussing the heavy burden of overcapacity in Northern European ports, but today those same hubs now face the other extreme of too much traffic and what to do with it all, writes Carly Fields.
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NewsTaking a unexpected dip
COMMENT: The temptation for this week’s comment is to write about the unfolding dramas on the US West Coast as the collective bargaining agreement circus rolls into town, writes Carly Fields.
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NewsInner city development threatens ports
COMMENT: It’s not enough that developers snap up waterfront land at any opportunity and throw up condominiums at a jaw-dropping speed to take advantage of the premium buyers will pay for a watery view, regardless of the impact on the port, writes Carly Fields.
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NewsNew kid on the block
Australia is about to welcome a new global terminal operator into its mix. An ICTSI-led consortium was the surprise winner for the concession of the new third container terminal in the Port of Melbourne.
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NewsTales of two ports
Two tales from UK ports make interesting reading this month. In the West, Bristol Port Company (BPC) offered £10m to the local council to buy the freehold to the docks at Avonmouth and Portbury. The company bought the leasehold in 1991 under a 150-year lease.
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Firm commitment
The highs and lows of port planning have been acutely felt on the US east coast this month.
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NewsBlanket bans
Getting greens onside is one of life’s great battles for ports looking to expand. Some tackle environmentalists head on, preferring a fight to flight. Others bring them into every conversation to prove there’s nothing to hide.
