Med ports' fermentation continues, but is it enough to make them gateways to Europe?
 The Med Ports trade show 2017 in Barcelona last October turned out to be more significant than even its organisers from Genoa's Medi Telegraph imagined given the ferment occasioned by the Catalan independence plebiscite and aftermath.
What might have taken a broad look at pan-European shipping instead closely focused on the historically lacklustre performance of Mediterranean ports as they continue to see serious tonnage pass them by to circle the Iberian Peninsula and bestow their cargo on ports from Le Havre to Hamburg.
As crowds outside Barcelona's waterfront World Trade Centre seethed, demanding a fundamental change in the relations of Catalonia and the Castillian Spain, so too were shipping delegates demanding fundamental change between Med ports and the Asia-Europe trade lane that so ignores what they have to offer.
And what is that? Apart from and quick Med turn around, largely free, or at least minimising the impact of costly EU environmental regulations. There is first the southern European hinterland to check out.
In 2017, figures show a 5.2 per cent year-on-year increase in Asian product consumption with Spain in the lead. Turkey shows 6.1 per cent jump. Ditto for the Black Sea region. But much is clouded in uncertainty with conflict brewing everywhere in the region.
Yet the positive consumption numbers speak for themselves. And there's talk of foreign operators looking for investment opportunities, breaking new ground in a newly formed states such as Catalonia.
According to one panel of experts at the Med show, the year 2020 will be the moment when the effects of ongoing transformation in shipping will really be felt by Med ports.
In the container sector there will be six major operators by 2020: Maersk Line, CMA CGM, MSC, Cosco, Hapag Lloyd and major Japanese partners, in ONE, or Ocean Network Express alliance. This will result in the rest vying for a less than a 40 per cent market share, they said.
There are other changes too. Jaime Paz, area manager of Mol, part of the Catalonia-based Transcoma group, said there is talk of a merger between Hapag Lloyd and CMA CGM. Such would control about 24 per cent of the global market, at current levels, and the governments of France and Germany would be stakeholders, he said.
What is to happen? Just a handful of mega carriers, and the Mediterranean, where consumption of Asian products is growing, a situation that is bound to have an impact.
To attract such investment to Med ports it is vital that they enhance their attractiveness with the fullest automation they possibly can, said Antti Halonen, of Finland's Konecranes.
"Currently, a non-automated but highly efficient terminal can move 20 TEU an hour," he said, adding that it was important to exponentially improve on that - to 30 TEU per hour.
As it stands the 20 TEU an hour rate breaks down as follows: 15 per cent for crane operations, 40 per cent for container stacking, 20 per cent for ground handling, and 25 per cent lost on idle time, a result of breaks, shift-turnovers and repositioning, communications between bosses and dockers.
Today's double challenge, especially in Mediterranean ports, and even more so in Italy, is that existing ports are located in cities, ill-suited to carry out modern container and bulk operations, which require space the absence of complaining citizens, who will volubly voice their unhappiness over a business which is noisy, smelly, unsightly and given to blinding 24/7 light shows.
At Barcelona (pop 1.6 million), 1,000 kilometres south of Paris (pop 12.1 million), though only 400 kilometes to Toulouse (pop 466,000) and 650 to the wine country of Bordeaux (pop 250,000), a compromise has been achieved. The BEST, a semi-automated terminal is located on the Prat Pier, not far from the city. The Konecranes man, Mr Halonen suggests moving high production areas of the port a few kilometres away, while admitting "these are complex choices".
Automation at port terminals has been in existence since 1993, the industry is shouting out for it; it's high time for an open discussion.
The new box port in Vado Ligure, 60 kilometres from Genoa (pop 850,000), is headed by Paolo Cornetto, the CEO of Maersk's APM Terminals in Italy, and is the last port infrastructure project in the Mediterranean before the mega container hub at Genoa Sampierdarena becomes a reality. Genoa is 170 kilometres from Turin (pop 886,000) and 144 km to Milan (pop 1.3 million) and 230 km from tourist-rich Florence (pop 400,000) and Pisa (pop 100,000) and 300 km to Bologna (pop 1 million).
The big Genoa box shop will be built on land that was previously the Calata Bettolo. The plan was approved by the then Port Authority of Savona in 2000, and the terminal should enter operation in March 2019.
Said Mr Cornetto: "We are now at 53 per cent of the completion of the civil engineering work. The installation of the cranes, which have already been completed at ZPMC in Shanghai, should be in place in early 2018. In 2020, the second phase of the terminal will be at full capacity. It is a facility that will break records.
This will be the only terminal in northwestern Italy that does not have limitations on the ships it can handle, neither because of the height of cranes, nor the depth of channels. And then there is the automation," he said. "It will be the first Italian terminal to be partially automated, in its cargo area cranes part, and this will allow us to handle goods more quickly."
Then there is rival Italian port of La Spezia, 150 kilometres to Florence and Pisa and and 200 kilometres to Bologna. Then one can turn one's eyes south to Eurogate's terminal at Limassol on the south coast of Turkey as well as Cosco operation at Piraeus near Athens (pop 2.9 million) within feeder reach Istanbul (pop 14.8 million); Gioia Tauro at the tip of the Italian boot and Salerno, south of Naples (3.1 million) and Rome (pop 4.5 million) as well Venice (pop 2.6 million) which is 700 kilometres to Budapest (pop 3.3 million) and closer Vienna (pop 1.8 million), nearby Bratislava (pop 600,000), Salzburg (pop 150,000) and Munich (pop 1.4 million).
The terminal at the Marseille (pop 1.8 million), its Fos Port Complex, 800 kilometres to Paris, 450 to Geneva (pop 200,000) and 730 to Zurich (pop 400,000), is now able to reach peak traffic levels of up to 100 trucks per hour and 800 trucks a day through its use of the Camco gate operating system (GOS) and the RBS TOPS Advanced terminal operating system (TOS) installed in 2012, says London's Port Technology.
This means that Seayard can achieve an annual capacity of 1 million TEU after starting as a joint venture in 2012 with an agreement between Terminal Investment Limited (TIL) - part of the Mediterranean Shipping Company, APM Terminals and COSCO, that divided the terminal’s ownership by 50 per cent, 42 per cent and eight per cent respectively.
Supported by intelligent automation between the GOS and the TOS, Seayard takes less than 30 minutes on average for complete a truck turnaround.
There's Koper in Slovenia with 560 kilometres to Budapest, but looking eastward, there is not much on the map but Piraeus near Athens, which appears to have no overland advantage and has more characteristics of a North African wayport restricted to serving its own limited hinterland and primarily acting as a transshipment point, sending and receiving containers from the promising Black Sea region.
Weighing the Med-centric dream against the reality of attempting to divert the northern range traffic to what might become a southern range appears to depend of two developments. The first is having the port facilities and the deep water to have the cargo handling operation as highly automated as possible, and the other is upgrading landside rail and road conveyance to the best standards because this is an area where the north range has the clear advantage.
Let the games begin.
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