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FROM
Roman times when it was centre of trade,
to its recent role as a pit stop on the
way somewhere else, the Mediterranean now
stands on the brink of becoming the hub
of the western world.
That's
because the Med's role has expanded, and
is now a major generator of the Asia-east
coast North and South American trade through
"wayporting" en route to northern
Europe, as well as feedering to and from
West Africa, where expotential trade growth
is not only possible, but increasingly likely.
Back
up evidence is found in this year's capacity
allocation of the big shipping alliances.
Most of the overall capacity increases come
from the Far East-Mediterranean trade, where
the combined capacity of Maersk and the
Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) in
their 2M network and that of Ocean Three
carriers, CMA CGM, China Shipping and UASC,
has increased 19 per cent from what it was.
The
2M will field nine loops, and O3 is providing
four, which gives them control of 68 per
cent of the total capacity on the FE-Med
route, with full coverage of the West Med,
Black Sea and the Adriatic.
The
FE-West Med AMX1/AMC1 service currently
operated by CSCL and UASC will be brought
into the new O3 network, while the existing
FE-Black Sea ABX, jointly operated by CSCL
with Yang Ming, PIL and Wan Hai is expected
to end.
Bigger
changes may be afoot given the regulatory
climate. If mad mullahs, sundry Arab head
hackers and Somali pirates pose physical
dangers to shipping, they at least keep
the Med safe from ever encroaching regulators.
Thus,
the Med one is still free to burn standard
bunker fuel without penalty, instead of
having to pay 50 per cent more to stay street
legal to get from Penzance to Peterburg
- 2,000 miles through the emission control
areas of the English Channel, the North
Sea and Baltic.
Neophyites
to shipping have always looked at the map
and wondered why ships bound for Europe
bypass Med ports like Marseilles and counterintuitively
go around the Iberian Peninsula to reach
northern range ports from Le Havre to Hamburg.
Old
hands tell them that serious railways and
networks, as well as large, affluent populations,
only exist in the north, so even wines and
rich liqueurs in the south or France head
north for export to Asia with nary a serious
thought for Marseilles or other Med ports.
It's
not as if Med and Black Sea ports have not
tried to change this, but they haven't had
much success. The Port of Constanza (aka
Constanta) on the the Black Sea's western
shores had ambitions of becoming a gateway
to central Europe, but infrastructure wasn't
in place nor would it be for some time.
But
recently Dutch agribusiness giant Nidera
revived dormant Constanza hopes by acquiring
the USA/USC Terminal with plans to play
a key role in the export of products from
its Balkans hinterland, having already been
encouraged by success exporting grains and
oilseeds from the port.
An
even more promising deal for a southern
route into Europe is last month's Chinese-Serbian-Hungarian
deal to build a 370-kilometre railway from
Belgrade to Budapest. This is part of a
Chinese scheme to use its Cosco Pacific
Port of Piraeus near Athens to access this
rail line, which may yet chip away as the
northern range market share.
At
the other end of the range, Barcelona has
made several attempts to offer rail services
into southern France. As early as 2000,
it came to Hong Kong to make its case, but
the problem was identified at a press conference
- the French and Spanish rail guages were
different.
That
has since been fixed with an EU standard
rail link, but it will wasn't enough to
occasion a major shift in trade patterns
- at least not yet.
This
attempt to drive a logistics chain from
the south has been recently renewed by Royal
HaskoningDHV master plan for the new Port
of Venice with its onshore and offshore
container terminals. Presented at a recent
London briefing, showing how Italy's city
of canals can accommodate mega ships from
a distance without marring the city's classic
beauty.
What's more, the
location of Venice at the northern end of the Adriatic puts it in striking distance
of major western European centres, 150 miles (240 kilometres ) from Milan and
300 miles from Geneva (480 kilometres) unlike Constanza or Barcelona which are
far away from substantial urban centres.
But the Dutch
engineers say the key to their new design lies in a logistics concept of cranes,
barges and semi-submersible vessels. Acting as a continuous conveyor, containers
are transferred from the offshore to the onshore terminal and vice versa.
"The terminal
will be able to move one million TEU a year, a significant portion of the container
volumes estimated for the Northern Adriatic Sea by 2030," said a Royal
HaskoningDHV statement.
Not quite as dramatic,
but other substantial changes on Mediterranean shores have also come to pass
in recent time. And like many social trends in the past, the impetus came from
California, in much the same way it comes today in the form of labour trouble
on the waterfront of LA and Long Beach.
Back in 2002,
there was a California lockout, and cargo headed elsewhere, and for the first
time Asian cargo headed through the Panama Canal in substantial quantities to
the US east coast, chiefly the Port of Savannah, because it was the first to
see the possibility.
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