Page 10 - My FlipBook
P. 10
LUSIVE STUDY Ocean Freight: Ports as Inhibitors and Enablers of Global Supply Chain Ecosystems
An agile industry responds
- Port initiatives that enable
supply chain ecosystems
It’s not all doom and gloom as many port communities, governments and terminal operators have the vision and
confidence – and funding - to develop their facilities to run effective port operations, expand facilities and in turn
attract and encourage new business.
Container ports in China hugely dominate world container traffic with seven ports in the global top 10 – together
handling over 140 million containers in 2013 - and their dominant position is unlikely to change within the
foreseeable future, due to continuing expansion of China import-export trade flows and massive infrastructure
investment. Just in the last decade, capacity at the Port of Shanghai has increased dramatically from 14 million
TEUs in 2004 to more than 33 million teu’s today. The rapid expansion was largely due to the construction of the
Yangshan Deepwater Port, 30 kilometers offshore, which opened in 2005 and can handle the world’s largest
container vessels. The Yangshan facility alone can handle over one million containers per month.
However, ports in other parts of the world are also taking positive steps to improve capacity and performance.
The US Gulf ports including Miami, New Orleans, Mobile, Savannah, Houston and Everglades are seeing their
containerized cargo benefiting from some north-to-south shift in US population, growth in the region’s
automotive and chemical industries and investment in container-handling facilities. While their individual
container traffic levels are very modest compared with many Asian and European ports, their collaborative
‘Port Cluster’ approach to working together, whist investing in expanding capacity throughout the gulf area,
is designed to take advantage of further expansion in US international trade.
In the United Kingdom, the new DP World London Gateway development is a great example of a fully
integrated Port Community, combining road and rail linkages, container traffic flows and port-centric logistics
facilities - all on a single location. With 3.5m TEU capacity, more than 800,000m² of warehousing and an eight lane
highway, London
Gateway has the potential to become a major player in the north-west Europe region.
In addition the UK’s once dominant Port of Liverpool is planning to regain some lost ground with a USD 500 million
investment in a new port project that will allow larger ships to dock in Merseyside and create the Liverpool2
container terminal at Seaforth, opening in 2015 , doubling overall capacity to two million TEUs. Currently restricted
to accepting ships with less than 3,500 containers, Liverpool2 will allow vessels carrying up to 13,500 containers to
call at the Port of Liverpool.
An agile industry responds
- Port initiatives that enable
supply chain ecosystems
It’s not all doom and gloom as many port communities, governments and terminal operators have the vision and
confidence – and funding - to develop their facilities to run effective port operations, expand facilities and in turn
attract and encourage new business.
Container ports in China hugely dominate world container traffic with seven ports in the global top 10 – together
handling over 140 million containers in 2013 - and their dominant position is unlikely to change within the
foreseeable future, due to continuing expansion of China import-export trade flows and massive infrastructure
investment. Just in the last decade, capacity at the Port of Shanghai has increased dramatically from 14 million
TEUs in 2004 to more than 33 million teu’s today. The rapid expansion was largely due to the construction of the
Yangshan Deepwater Port, 30 kilometers offshore, which opened in 2005 and can handle the world’s largest
container vessels. The Yangshan facility alone can handle over one million containers per month.
However, ports in other parts of the world are also taking positive steps to improve capacity and performance.
The US Gulf ports including Miami, New Orleans, Mobile, Savannah, Houston and Everglades are seeing their
containerized cargo benefiting from some north-to-south shift in US population, growth in the region’s
automotive and chemical industries and investment in container-handling facilities. While their individual
container traffic levels are very modest compared with many Asian and European ports, their collaborative
‘Port Cluster’ approach to working together, whist investing in expanding capacity throughout the gulf area,
is designed to take advantage of further expansion in US international trade.
In the United Kingdom, the new DP World London Gateway development is a great example of a fully
integrated Port Community, combining road and rail linkages, container traffic flows and port-centric logistics
facilities - all on a single location. With 3.5m TEU capacity, more than 800,000m² of warehousing and an eight lane
highway, London
Gateway has the potential to become a major player in the north-west Europe region.
In addition the UK’s once dominant Port of Liverpool is planning to regain some lost ground with a USD 500 million
investment in a new port project that will allow larger ships to dock in Merseyside and create the Liverpool2
container terminal at Seaforth, opening in 2015 , doubling overall capacity to two million TEUs. Currently restricted
to accepting ships with less than 3,500 containers, Liverpool2 will allow vessels carrying up to 13,500 containers to
call at the Port of Liverpool.
