I. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PORT OF LE HAVRE : A
NEED
The maritime transport knows, since the universalization of the
economy supported by the technical evolutions as regards transport, a strong
progression in the carriage of goods.
The intensification of the international exchanges indeed
involved a change and a reorganization of the maritime transport. The increase
in the capacity of the ships and the fall of the costs of transport pushed the
merchant marine towards the massification of the infrastructures. The ports are
from now on constrained to accommodate increasingly large ships with
increasingly important volumes and to treat them under the best possible
conditions.
A race with gigantism is thus launched between the various
European ports which assert the place of door of entry of Europe.
The Port authority of Le Havre which has assets to put forward in
this fight thus emitted a project of development of the capacities of its
infrastructures in order to attract a more significant part of traffic and to
have effective and powerful means of reforwarding of freight in its
hintertland.
A. The massification of the maritime transport
The maritime transport has a paramount role in the new context of
universalization of the economy, process which is characterized by the
multiplicity of the networks of transnational exchanges, the intensification of
the circulation of flows of goods on a worldwide scale, the prevalence of
telecommunications and the concentration of the activities of production
between a reduced number of areas economically dynamic. The exchanges develop
but concentrate in some large poles corresponding to the developed countries of
the northern hemisphere and in particular the countries of the Triad North
America/European Union/South Asia are (Japan). The world trade of containers is
mainly carried out between these industrialized areas. The fact is that the
exchanges is/western are twice more important in volume than NORTH-SOUTH flows
between the industrialized countries and those in the process of
development.
In 1996, the three geographical areas carry out 81,7% of the
world containerized traffic.
It is :
· the Far East with 44% (69,32 Me EVP)
· Europe with 23% (36,26 Me EVP)
· and North America with 14,7% (23,19% Me EVP)
Asia, which multiplied by nearly 8 its traffic in 15 years,
whereas Europe has only triplet his activity during same time, affirms from now
on its hegemony on the world scene.
The companies on their side open and function on an increasingly
broad space over the borders ; they disperse their activities, are
delocalized in order to conquer new markets and to find conditions optimal of
operation in particular for the labor. This evolution is carried out on a
worldwide scale thanks to telecommunications and the techniques of transport.
The latter being increasingly powerful, the distances time and the costs of
exploitation are consequently reduced
The causes of success of the maritime transport of tangible
properties are thus obvious :
· need for using the maritime ways for increasingly long
and increasingly bulky exchanges at an advantageous cost
· capacity of flexibility (the maritime transport can
convey all kinds of goods)
· great safety of transported freight
The maritime transport is adapted perfectly to the gigantism of
the infrastructures. The total absence of linear infrastructure of the maritime
transport admits the massification of volumes by the gigantism of the ships.
The massification is the most spectacular form of the change of
the maritime transport : giant tankers, super container ships,
increasingly heavy final infrastructures, increasingly wide surfaces of
storage.
Gigantism answers in the search of an increasingly large
productivity as regards maritime transport : it does not cause a reduction
speed, the loading and unloading proceeds more quickly, the construction of the
ships is less expensive (their number is more reduced), the exploitation is
cheaper bus plus the ship is larger, less the consumption of energy is
important, and manpower of the crews are more reduced.
The maritime transport thus fulfills the requirements of the
owner for whom gigantism reduces the costs and allows to offer to the companies
more competitive costs of transport.
The maritime transport thus returns largely counts some in the
logistic strategies of the companies aiming at providing a product available in
a place and at the time wanted according to the best cost
ratio/effectiveness.
|
Leaves the traffic container in the whole of the sea
traffic in 1988 and 1995
|
|
1988
|
32,8%
|
|
1995
|
38,3%
|
The importance of the investments born of the modern techniques
of the maritime transport (ships container ships, parks of containers, ships
carriers) encouraged the maritime companies to be linked in pools to exploit
these materials. These agreements are very numerous today and the great
company-conferences work in pool on the majority of the lines which they
exploit. The following stage of integration of the maritime transport consists
in sharing all the human and commercial means by creating an entity in which
the companies are erased behind a common denomination and work out their
marketing strategy together. These conventions are called
« consortia ».
Thus, from the old conferences, agreements of juridically
independent companies made up in the years 1970 in order to ensure a regular
service road stable tariffs, by envisaging the ports of call, the frequency of
touched, the division of freight, were born from the regroupings more or less
integrated in the form of pools or of consortia going until ensuring the
financing of the ships jointly carries containers. To the difference in the
maritime conferences, pools and consortia, do not only aim at regularizing the
filling of the ships and the freight charges. They appear by the creation of ad
hoc legal entities : G.I.E or companies, managed independently of the
companies founders.
The pools are agreements between companies aiming at distributing
the traffic containerized by sharing the means of exploitation and possibly the
receipts and expenditure. The object of the pool relates primarily to the time
harmonization, the exchanges of spaces aboard the ships (slots), each company
preserving its own marketing policy and its network of agencies. Within a
consortium, integration relates to spaces ships, the schedules, the receipts
and expenditure and can reach even financial commercial management ships
carries containers.
But the increase in the fixed assets in the ships with the
generalization of the ships overpanamax and the commercial need to improve the
costs at ends of competitiveness, by the optimization of average the
techniques, led lately to the bursting of the integrated consortia and their
replacement by new entities between armaments known as
« méga-alliances ». These méga-alliances
gather the transport capacities of their members in an offer of services common
to the customers. They make it possible to offer up to 4 weekly departures per
geographical area.
Five alliances were thus created between 1995 and 1998 on the
relation Europe/the Far East :
· TOTAL ALLIANCE gathering armaments APL/MITSUI
OSK/NEDLLOYD MISC and OOCL
· LARGE ALLIANCE between HAPAG LLYOD/NYK/EASTERN NEPTUNE
LINES/P&OCL
· ALLIANCE between MAERSK/SEALAND
· K LINE/YANG MING & COSCO
· NORASIA/HYUNDAI & MSC
The response given by the armaments to the requirements of
productivity, quality of service and profitability, was not limited to the new
forms of partnership and the increase in the size of the ships. The
reorganization of the procedures also related to the configuration of the
harbor service roads by instituting a differentiation within the maritime
services. Traditionally, the maritime regular lines were organized according to
pendular displacements' of ships between two continents.
The first innovation was the creation of lines around the world
in 1984 by American APL, follow-up of the Taiwanese EVERGREEN whose ships
connect the transpacific crossings and deck chairs while circulating, for the
ones, in the direction « eastbound » (ship going towards
the east), and for the others, in the direction
« westbound » (ship going towards the west). Today, this
concept of service road around the world was not generalized, only armaments
EVERGREEN, CGM, OCL and TRICON adopted this type of organization.
The second change which has affected the scheduling of the
regular lines results from the will of the armaments to reduce the number of
touched transoceanic ships and to structure their service roads between
satellite ports pivots (hand ports), and ports whose hierarchisation is in the
course of reinforcement because of introduction of the ships overpanamax.
The ship-owners thus developed ships container ships of a
capacity of approximately 7000 not serving EVP that a restricted number of
ports having very developed functions of collector and distributer because the
container ships serve only multimode platforms of transshipment effectively
serving the UTI on the back-country.
The UTI (Units of Intermodal Transport) also largely contributed
to the massification of the maritime transport. Called more usually containers,
these units are limp standardized which allow an arrangement much more rational
in the ships, the increase in the capacities and the lowering of the costs of
transport. The container protects the goods which it contains and allows thanks
to its dimensions standardized to accelerate times of loading and unloading and
the number of revolutions of the ships. One of the principal virtues of the
container is to authorize the combination of the various means of transport,
without breaking bulk. The specificity of the standard and interchangeable
container to be makes extremely practical means of transport of it as soon as
it was about an intermodal transport, from where the name of Intermodal Unit of
Transport.
EVP= container are equivalent 20 feet. Unit being used to
measure the capacity of the ships and to quantify the traffics of containers.
There are two types of containers to the standards ISO (International Standard
Organization, International Standardization Organization) : 20 feet and 40
feet. A container of 40 feet = 40/20 = 2 EVP.
Initially, the massification stressed the size of the ships
thanks to the revolution of the container which allowed the marginalisation of
the transport of the diversified goods.
The massification of the sea traffic thus involved the need for
the ship-owners for covering the whole of the world market, because the more
one ship has a great capacity, the more the load is high, the more the
stopovers are long, fewer the touched ports, longer the distances between the
ports. Competition between the ship-owners also became very strong :
largest increase and the small ones disappear. The competition A constrained to
increase the frequency of their service roads while compressing the costs, and
the solution was the growth of the size of the ships and the regrouping of the
armaments, and what involves the elimination of certain ports.
Essentially, the maritime economy is thus characterized today in
the wake of the globalisation and the growth of the intercontinental trade, by
the concentration of the large armaments which join or amalgamate, by a scaling
of the boats put in line and final infrastructures of transshipment.
Accompanying this evolution, the number of the touched ports
falls with the profit of those of them having a continental dimension :
volume necessary to justify the stopover increases indeed with the size of the
ships.
The ports having very important capacities of reception will be
thus selected to treat the giant container ships. Is then delivered a true race
to gigantism also on the level them final infrastructures in order to to
attract the giant ships borrowing the maritime grand boulevards.
| 
