Who would have foreseen 40 years ago the launching of an 18 000 TEU container ship? The unprecedented growth of such ships presents an increasing challenge for port infrastructure planners. The paper concludes that during the next 20 years, the growth of container ships will depend on factors related to supply and demand, and to external factors. These factors will be defined as the constraints…
We show in this paper that the throughput data for the top 300 container ports reported each year by the various authorities follows a simple truncated lognormal distribution. This surprising phenomenon repeats itself every year from 1982 to 2006, despite many tumultuous changes in the container shipping world. The empirical data suggests that Gibrat’s Law of proportionate growth indeed holds…
Income from leasing container terminals and terminal facilities over the last 15 years has risen from miniscule levels to a point where it now represents a majority of the total income at some us ports [l]. This paper reviews the methods used to lease container terminals and terminal facilities, examines the leasing methodologies and pricing approaches used by us public port authorities, and di…
Over the last few years, the progressive scarcity of land for greenfield projects in ports and the enormous financial resources required to realize new terminal facilities have induced international terminal operators (ITOs) to enter in various types of agreements. In particular, ITOs have growingly resorted to equity joint-ventures (EJVs) to develop new infrastructures and share project risks.…
The paper discusses how logistics service providers are using terminals in their supply chains. It argues that an increasing ‘terminalization’ of supply chains is unfolding, whereby seaport and inland terminals are taking up a more active role in supply chains by increasingly confronting market players with operational considerations such as imposing berthing windows, dwell time charges, tr…
Despite the rapid economic growth in the Yangtze River Delta area, the Yangtze River itself is lagging behind as measured by the ratio of container volume to total freight volume. According to the Ministry of Communications’ statistics, more than 70% of cargoes generated in the Yangtze Valley are suitable for containerized transport, but, at this time, only a fraction of these cargoes are act…
Ports are the next candidates for radical change. A jumbo containership can move boxes at sea for less than one cent per ton mile, and fast double-stack trains move them overland for less than three cents. A container can cross the Atlantic for $300, but the terminals consume $500 and too much time. The port of 1999 will work 24 hours and seven days a week. It will be manned by a few well-paid …
Positioned strategically between major east–west and north–south trading routes, the Caribbean basin has become a locus of new service configurations in container shipping. Over the last decade global shipping lines have been restructuring their service networks in the region in order to integrate local services with the newly rationalized intercontinental connections. By comparing service …
In many countries around the world, governments and public port authorities have retreated from port operations in the belief that enterprise-based port services and operations would allow for greater flexibility and efficiency in the market (through more competition) and a better response to consumers’ demands. In this new environment, the awarding of port terminals to private operators …
The aim of this paper is to develop realistic and relevant investment planning models for inland container transportation systems. The models may be utilized to identify the most eOEective investment plan for inland transportation infrastructure development and to evaluate the inland container transportation system. The procedure enables determination of the optimal locations, sizes and time of…
This paper proposes an integrated set of 4Cs indices, namely, centrality index, competition index, congestion index and concentration index to examine network effects in the East Asia container port industry. Empirical analysis confirms that larger ports enjoy greater direct network effects related to economies of scale, whereas, smaller ports leverage on indirect network effects to widen their…
On 11 July 1404, Zheng He (AD 1371–1435) departed from the east coast of China on his first voyage to the West. Nearly 90 years later, on 3 August 1492, Christopher Columbus departed on his first voyage to the other side of the world. Global navigation opened a new chapter in human history. Since then, maritime logistics has indeed turned the earth into the global village that we see today, a…
Coastal shipping is one of the most sustainable and economically competitive modes of transportation. This study employs the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method to determine the importance of various factors influencing container carriers’ use of coastal shipping. A three-level hierarchical structure with the 17 attributes is proposed and tested. A previous AHP survey in Taiwan has indica…
My article in the June 1996 issue of this journal considered the relocation of container handling facilities for the largest deep-sea vessels from upstream urban ports to downstream terminals at coastal locations [I]. It was argued in the article that two upstream urban ports (Antwerp and Hamburg) have been unable to relocate their mainport function due principally to territorial (and hence pol…
This paper addresses empty container reposition planning by plainly considering safety stock management and geographical regions. This plan could avoid drawback in practice which collects mass empty containers at a port then repositions most empty containers at a time. Empty containers occupy slots on vessel and the liner shipping company loses chance to yield freight revenue. The problem is dr…
In this paper a two-stage Data Envelopment Approach is used to assess the relative efficiency of container shipping agents operating at Spanish ports, and studying the factors influencing it. In the first stage, an input-oriented, Variable Returns to Scale (VRS) model is used to compute efficiency scores of the different shipping agents. The model considers labor as input, and numbers of loaded…
Very large container ships are being built with the theoretical justification that they will produce economies of scale. It is clear, however. that the immediate result of the mega-ship buildings is an overtonnaging of the world's major liner routes. As major operators have put newer and bigger ships in the water, they have significantly reduced the slot costs in the container trades to which t…
Containerization has been seen as primarily a maritime technology. The progression of container shipping services in the 1970s and early 1980s led to a restructuring of port systems around the world. Within the past several years, however, the most significant innovations in containerization in North America have occurred inland. Not only has there been an important geographical shift in the mo…
Since the hub-and-spoke concept was introduced to the aviation market after the US airline deregulation in the late 1970s, it becomes a primary distribution model employed by leading international logistics companies. This pattern drives the companies to consolidate shipments on the large scale at major terminals (i.e. hub) and to redistribute the smaller scale of shipments to their respective …
Over the last four decades, the UK container port system experienced a shift to and concentration in the southeast of the country, close to the English Channel. At the same time, traditional ports in the north and centre of the country have lost importance, despite overall container traffic growth. This paper analyses the evolution of container traffic at UK ports, mapping the patterns of conta…
Containerization was introduced into Nigeria in the late 1960s, not through a deliberate policy but through the unilateral action of shipping companies. In spite of this, the percentage of the country's external trade cargo that is containerized grew from only about 0.03 in 1968-69 to about 8.6 in 1981. Containerization of cargo is more significant in the import than in the export trade. Perhap…
The FIrst part of this paper brings into discussion some recent changes in the dynamics of the European container handling business, in particular as a result of vertical and horizontal integration strategies of container terminal operators. The industry structure has become su ciently consolidated to raise a fundamental question about whether market forces are su cient to prevent the abuse…
Research that examined the land utilization of the container terminals in a global perspective[1] revealed that the land utilization planned and achieved by Asian container terminals are much higher than the terminals in western Europe and North America. From the operational point of view, this has led to the question: `what are the impacts of these strategies in land utilization on the yard op…
This paper examines the recent concession of the Port of Piraeus (OLP) container terminal to Cosco Pacific. Serious discussions on how to transform the terminal to landlord status started in 2004 and, after an aborted tender, a concession award was approved by the Greek parliament in 2009. The contract is now operational after strong opposition by the port unions and a renegotiation phase in 20…
A world that shrinks with progressive improvements in transportation andcommunications is a fact of 20th century life. The shrinking process can produce new patterns and perceptions of strategic location. In this paper we are looking specifically at nodes in transportation systems. In the light of transportation progress, we re-consider some of the time-worn ideas about centrality, accessibilit…
Container ports in Southeast Asia accounted for an estimated 30.0% of the world’s transhipment traffic in 2004. The share of the region’s transhipment trade was forecasted to increase to 32.5% in 2015. The potential offered by this large and expanding market encouraged major container terminal operators located in Port Klang, Singapore and Tanjung Pelepas to compete intensively for this bus…
Despite the prevalence of its use, very little is understood about the role of electronic commerce (EC) practice on the strategic management of container shipping companies. Four case studies were undertaken to assess the main uses, motivations, barriers and strategic relevance of EC in the container shipping industry between 1992 and 2002. The cases studies included one large, one medium and o…
This paper discusses the performance of Canadian container ports in the 1980s, with emphasis on the big three: Halifax, Montreal and Vancouver. The paper compares the performance of these ports as measured by the number of TEUs handled, first at a global scale and then at the regional levels of East Coast North America and West Coast North America. However, past performance provides only half t…
The major characteristics of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) are an enterprise-wide system that covers all the business functions and information resources, integrated database, built-in best industry practice, packaged software and open architecture. ERP enables reduction of system development time, flexibility, standardization of workflow and effective business planning capability. ERP is …
This article is concerned with an analytical summary of how the Japanese container ports have been taking place overcapacity problem in a systematic way. It focuses on institutional aspects of the overcapacity problem from the viewpoint of accounting cost and opportunity cost. The ®rst issue arises due to the port authority’s accounting system and insu cient disclosures of ®nancial statem…
The world bulk shipping market has been in a peak period since 2003, and this has lasted an incredibly long time considering that the markets are much more complex than before. This paper investigates the characteristics of volatility in dry bulk freight rates of different vessel sizes (capesize, panamax and handysize). The daily returns of freight rate indices of three different types of bulk …
Risk analysis in seaports plays an increasingly important role in ensuring port operation reliability, maritime transportation safety and supply chain distribution resilience. However, the task is not straightforward given the challenges, including that port safety is affected by multiple factors related to design, installation, operation and maintenance and that traditional risk assessment met…
This study looks at the degrees of interference for multiple cranes that work simultaneously at six major container terminals in the port of Kaohsiung. The results con®rm that there are di erent degrees of mutual crane interference among terminals where di erent operational modes are adapted in the container yards. RTG handling systems show a very high value of aggregate cranes exponent f…
This paper aims to examine the inherent problems in the old lease charging system at Busan container terminals, to explore the factors and rationale, both theoretically and practically, for developing a reasonable lease calculation model, and to articulate the design of an efficient lease charging system to enhance throughputs. On the basis of the above achievements, implications for the newly …
There have been many e orts to develop a logistics information system in the Korean logistics industry. In spite of these e orts, there are many points which need improvement in the Logistics Information System, of which function is the electronic data communication without added value. This paper aims to describe some of the main problems and the successful factors which are being found in…
This paper describes in detail the award process of the concession for a large container terminal in the port of Rotterdam. This process can be termed competitive bidding, and differs from a tender because of the frequent interaction between the Port of Rotterdam Authority and the candidates. The competitive bidding process is a potentially attractive form in which to grant concessions, if ther…