C. Compete with between « hand
ports »
With the multiplication of the very large ships and the
phenomenon of jumboisation which knows the merchant navy, one attends a
concentration of flows because of a frantic search for saving of time and
scale, towards a reduced number of transhipment ports. This movement of
concentration of the traffics on the hand-ports (principal ports) of
grouping-deblocking to the detriment of the multipolar service road makes more
intense the competitions between the European ports. Currently, each port
claims to be the door of Europe.
The role of the ports is thus particularly important : the
crucial moments of a transport are displacements on line of the ships (speed,
capacity, safety, reliability), but more especially the operations at the ends
of handling, loading and unloading, the majority long and expensive. It is on
the phases of immobility and not of movement that the attention
concentrates.
Indeed, the startup the true ones
« mastodons » floating and their exploitation by
méga-consortia or méga-alliances can only reinforce the tendency
to the concentration of the traffics on a number of basic ports limited on each
continent, that is to say two or three in Europe. However, if the port cannot
answer waiting of the large ship-owners, not only it will not be able to follow
the growth rate waited of the traffic in Northern Europe (+8% per annum of the
traffic container) but it will be relegated in the category of the secondary
ports (satellite ports) which will be served by the large ones
« feeders » of 2000 to 3000 EVP since the ports pivots, or
hand ports, with in prospect displacement for the industrial activities and
commercial towards these principal ports. The reception of the large container
ships from 6000 to 8000 EVP will thus require nautical capacities that few
ports are likely to offer.
The stake is thus of very first order. The candidates with the
hand-ports will fight a true battle to reach this statute.
It thus acted for the large European ports such as Rotterdam,
Antwerp, Hamburg, Bremen, Le Havre... to be able to treat under optimum
conditions for reliability, the stopovers of the méga container ships
aligned by the large armaments.
Because, because of the pressing need for profitability, the ship
does not remain any more the major part of time at the stopovers for
unloading ; it always tends to being moving, perpetually under operation.
The continuation of this objective implies within the harbor installations the
simplification of the operations of handling, the use of the units of load
(containers), the specialization of the operations of transport by the
introduction of the techniques aiming at simplifying, to see to remove the
operations of handling in order to accelerate the number of revolutions of the
ships. The loading and the unloading of the large modern ships require moreover
of the specific harbor equipment. This equipment (basins, gantries, materials
and surfaces of storage) allows a very high production (2 minutes for the
potting and the discharge of a container) but involves a considerable
investment.
The profitability of such equipment (harbor ships and
installations) thus requires a concentration of the traffic on a limited number
of ports of the same maritime frontage, ships of less capacity, the feeders,
then serving the secondary ports starting from these principal ports. This
concentration will continue to be exerted in the future with the profit of the
most important ports, and of the increasingly full deflections of trade to
envisage, as well with the importation as with export.
The feedering consists in organizing transshipments in an
intermediate port said port pivot or hub between a ship feeder and a
transoceanic ship said mother ship in order to avoid with this last having to
make stopover in all the ports of the continent. British Isles, Scandinavia,
the Iberian peninsula are very frequently served kind since Rotterdam, Hamburg
or Le Havre. The traffic feeder concerns today in Le Havre between 12 and 13%
of the traffic.
Let us note that the traffic in tonnage of a port reflects the
quality of the harbor infrastructures less and less. It is the diversity of the
treated goods, the services present (reception, maintenance, repair,
restoration, customs, etc...), conditioning, stock management, of labelling,
the quality of the units of handling, the convenience of the infrastructures
which define the value of the harbor equipment. These characteristics are
likely to collect the traffics of the categories of goods with strong added
value (containers for example whose added value is 12 times stronger than that
of hydrocarbons).
The rationalization of harbor work and the reduction of the
number of the dockers are also on the agenda in order to increase the
productivity and to offer competitive tariffs of stopover. The variations of
the cost of the labor are reflected in the price of the stopover : to
discharge container ships, one needs against in Le Havre 19 men 10 only in
Antwerp ; for a container, the cost of handling reached in 1991 1125 FR.
in Le Havre and 750 FR. in Antwerp.
The large European ports have very vast spaces which allow the
versatility, they are organizations polyfonctionnels offering a diversity of
equipment marked by the multiplication of the number of basins (Hamburg :
65 basins). The length of quay is also an indication of capacity of reception
of the large ships (Rotterdam : 40 km length of quay).
The current tendency for the harbor authorities is to develop the
capacities of reception of super the container ships whose added value and
generalization in the maritime transport make them impossible to circumvent.
Indeed, the transport of containers largely contributed to the
massification of the maritime transport and the changes which were followed
from there. The méga container ships only use a network of lines limited
served by some large ports. Competition between the principal ports of the same
maritime frontage is very strong.
Also, the giant container ships serve only the ports majors which
have the capacity to run out the goods thanks to a diversified ground network,
extended and dense.
The port major becomes consequently a great intermodal center of
exchanges, wearing of access to the continent.
In Europe, from the geographical point of view, the distribution
of the ports is asymmetrical : the main part of the ports is installed on
the continental littoral of the North Sea (Northern Range). The geographical
proximity of ports such as Rotterdam, Antwerp, Le Havre, Hamburg, Bremen can
only reinforce one competition already very strong.
Nevertheless, the wearing of Rotterdam seems the hand European
port.
Selection criteria of a stopover :
1. reception and treatment of the ship
2. treatment and evacuation or gathering of the
goods
3. maritime positioning of the stopover compared to the
route of the service
4. nautical quality of the access and the port
5. positioning of the port compared to the economic poles of
the continent
6. quality and dimension of the system of distribution
available or offered by the port
7. existence and localization of the other substitutable
ports for the satisfaction of one or the other criterion if necessary
| 
