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MFT
also boasts of good performance levels,
cost-effectiveness and unmatched quality
service complying with ISO 9001:2000 standards
as well as good connectivity (regular services
from Malta Freeport enjoy connections with
128 ports worldwide, 75 of which are throughout
Europe, North Africa, the Black Sea and
the Middle East).
Asked
about the competition from North Africa
ports, VGT said he would welcome competition.
"Instead of competition, it is the
political difficulties in Libya and North
Africa in general that hamper us. A strong
and vibrant North African region actually
works well for us."
Said
MFT: "Our competitors are other transshipment
ports in the Mediterranean. - Gioia Tauro,
Cagliari and Taranto in Italy, Algeciras
and Valencia in Spain, Piraeus in Greece,
Damietta, Port Said and Tangiers."
Of
course, Piraeus and Valencia are not strictly
transshipment ports. Competition is on the
increase as the various ports are investing
heavily in their facilities to capture a
higher share of the market including the
ports of Port Said, Port Said East and Tangier,
he said.
Virtually
all large Mediterranean transshipment hub
ports recorded double digit growth in 2013,
well above regional and global growth levels,
said Drewry Maritime Research.
Of
the eight ports handling more than one million
TEU a year of transshipments, all but one
- Valencia - recorded growth, and all of
the growing ports saw volumes increase by
more than the market average. Several saw
double digit transshipment volume growth
(Piraeus, Tanger Med, Gioia Tauro and Ambarli)
with Tanger Med topping the list through
a near 40 per cent increase.
It
seems as if increasing vessel sizes and
carrier alliances is favouring mega-hubs
once again, notes Drewry. The last time
this happened was before 2006, when the
level of hub port efficiency became unacceptable
to ocean carriers, prompting the introduction
of more direct services.
The
smaller hubs, however, are suffering from
lack of scale, changes in alliance make-ups,
as well as specific weaknesses in some cases
(draught restrictions in Damietta, for example).
Transshipment
volumes at key Mediterranean hubs surged
by an average of over eight per cent, more
than twice the global figure.
Drewry's
view is that bigger east-west ships and
larger alliances are likely to continue
to allow key transshipment hub ports in
the Mediterranean to outperform underlying
organic market growth by serving regions
well beyond the Med through relay.
The
large hubs with critical mass are likely
to continue to be the main beneficiaries
while the smaller hubs will find it harder
to compete unless they can find a niche
- or a large carrier to back them.
In
a recent development, which illustrates
the dynamics of the transshipment game in
the Med, the Mediterranean Shipping Company
(MSC) added a second weekly Med-Canada loop,
connecting the carrier's hubs of Valencia
in Spain and Sines in Portugal to Montreal.
Thus
Asian cargo that might have been dropped
off by mega ship at any number of rival
ports, but in this case was up by a 3,000
to 4,000-TEU ships at a Spanish and Portuguese
ports and taken north across the Atlantic
and then 1,000 miles up the St Lawrence
to Montreal, much of its cargo to be railed
or trucked west to consumer rich central
Ontario and upstate New York.
Which
goes to show how a peripheral role in passing
cargo one from one ship to another becomes
central to a global game in the Mediterranean
where the fortunes of so many depend on
the outcome.
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