World Cargo News

WorldCargo
news
APRIL 2007
HPH wins Australian foothold
Hutchison Port Holdings (HPH)
has secured an important beachhead in Australasia after being
named as preferred operator for
Brisbane’s new Fisherman Islands
berths 11 and 12.
HPH, which tried and failed
to gain an Oceania foothold via
part-ownership and management
of the South Island New Zealand
port of Lyttelton, will be much
happier with its success in Brisbane, which not only has container trade many times that of
Lyttelton but is also regarded as
the Australian port with best
growth prospects.
The Queensland government’s
choice of HPH will add further
intrigue to its New South Wales
counterpart’s plans for the third
Port Botany terminal (PB3T).
NSW Ports Minister Joe Tripodi,
who unexpectedly retained his
portfolio during a post-election
ministerial re-shuffle at the end of
March, has publicly stressed his
intention to seek “new blood” for
PB3T by excluding incumbents
DP World and Toll/Patrick from
bidding for operating rights.
The Port of Brisbane Corporation (PBC) pointedly welcomed
existing operators during its EOI
process for Fisherman Islands 11
HPH has been named preferred operator for Fisherman Islands berths 11 and 12
and 12, but never publicly identified any of the seven shortlisted
parties, although HPH was nominated by local sources as a contender, as was APM Terminals.
In announcing HPH’s success,
Queensland premier Peter Beattie
said,“HPH has interests in 23 countries throughout Asia, the Middle
East,Africa, Europe and the Americas. In percentage terms, the Port
of Brisbane is Australia’s fastest
growing container port and having a global player like HPH on
board is a welcome addition dur-
ing this time of rapid expansion.
“The government has invested
A$300M in port and related infrastructure at the Port of Brisbane
precincts in 2005/06 and 2006/
07. We will invest a further
A$200M over five years in Berths
11 and 12 and associated terminals, which will increase Brisbane’s
container-handling capacity by
25% and take the number of dedicated container wharves at the
port to nine,” Beattie said.
Preliminary construction has
already begun, with Berth 11 ex-
Fortress to buy Interpool
In a surprise move, container and
chassis lessor Interpool has announced that it has entered into a
definitive agreement “to be acquired by certain private equity
funds managed by affiliates of Fortress Investment Group LLC pursuant to a merger in which all
Interpool stockholders would receive US$27.10 in cash for each
share of Interpool common stock
that they hold.”
The total transaction value, in-
cluding assumed debt, is approximately US$2.4B, Interpool said.
Fortress, the first US hedge
fund manager to list on the NYSE,
made its move for Interpool after
a Special Committee of Independent Directors, set up to review a management buyout proposal from Interpool chairman
and CEO Martin Tuchman, solicited competing offers.
Backed by other significant
Interpool shareholders and an in-
vestment fund affiliated with Fortis Merchant Banking, Tuchman
had offered to buy all of
Interpool’s outstanding common
stock for US$24 per share in cash.
Observers say Fortress is paying a high price given that over
70% of Interpool’s container fleet
on operating lease is owned by
P&R Equipment Finance Corp,
a subsidiary of German container
investment fund manager Pfeiffer
& Roth, although the company’s
pected to be operational by mid2012 and Berth 12 in mid-2014.
Construction is also well underway
on Berth 10, which is expected to
be operational by July 2008.
HPH Group managing director, John Meredith, welcomed
HPH’s selection and indicated
that the company would employ
a unionised workforce. “In HPH
we recognise that good labour relations are key to any business
success.We are committed to collective bargaining and will seek
to enter into an enterprise agreement with the Maritime Union
of Australia for our Brisbane operations,” he said.
● The Fremantle Port Authority
(FPA) has indefinitely deferred
plans to return the Inner Harbour’s original container terminals, Berths 11 and 12, to container
operations under the management
of Mediterranean Shipping Co
(MSC), after deciding there is
greater need for the existing
breakbulk and general cargo use.
The FPA was scathingly criticised
after naming MSC as preferred
tenderer for the project, described
by (then) stevedores Patrick and
P&O Ports as completely unnecessary in a port with the country’s lowest terminal utilisation.
container finance lease portfolio
and 230,000 plus chassis fleet operated by Trac Lease - are clearly
an attraction.
Significantly, Fortress also controls reefer leasing specialist Carlisle
Leasing, which has also now entered the dry freight operating lease
market. A merger of the two operations could well be on the cards.
The Interpool Board has unanimously approved the Fortress deal.
Subject to the approval of Interpool
stockholders and other customary
closing conditions, the transaction
is expected to close in the third
quarter of 2007 (see also p47).
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Beverage industry logistics service provider, J F Hillebrand Group,
has acquired 100% of the shares
of flexitank operator and manufacturer Trans Ocean Distribution
Ltd (TOD).Terms of the deal were
not disclosed.
The takeover combines the
flexitank expertise of TOD with
J F Hillebrand’s freight forwarding capabilities and global network of 36 offices to create a
market leader geared to the provision of a full range of logistics
service solutions.
J F Hillebrand will retain the
TOD brand, staff and service network and establish it as its bulk liquids division. Brendan McKenna,
TOD president, will join the executive board of J F Hillebrand,
with responsibility for the bulk
liquids division, based at TOD’s
Houston office.
Hillebrand has made use of
tank containers and flexitanks for
the carriage of wine in bulk for
several years. Most recently, the
emphasis has been on flexitanks,
as wine marketers respond positively to the improvements that
have been made in the quality of
both the flexitanks themselves and
flexitank logistics services.
Against this background, the
acquisition of TOD by Hillebrand
Doosan for
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Korea’s Doosan Heavy Industries
has won a contract to deliver 14
quayside container gantry cranes
to Damietta International Port in
Egypt for US$123M (US$8.78M
per crane). Doosan has said that it
expects more orders to follow.
It could be that this remark is a
guarded reference to optional quayside cranes or, more obliquely, to
the 40-plus RMGs that the port is
understood to be negotiating for.
This is the second large order
for quayside ganty cranes placed
recently that has not been won
by ZPMC, following South African port operator SAPO’s recent contract with Liebherr Container Cranes.
Damietta is around 70 km
from Port Said and the new container terminal is being developed
by KGL PI, a private port developer that is itself a subsidiary of
Kuwait-listed Gulf Link Holding
Company KSCC. KGL has a 40
year concession to build and operate a container terminal with a
capacity of 2.5M TEU/year in
2009 extending to 4M TEU/year
in the second phase.
TOD’s VinBulk flexitank has proved
to be popular with the New World
wineries
is seen as a “good fit” in the marketplace.TOD brings its strengths
in the flexitank services it provides
not only to the wine producers
of Australia, South Africa, South
America and the US West Coast,
but also to non-beverage shippers
of bulk liquids in the pharmaceutical, industrial, latex and foodgrade sectors. To this can be married J F Hillebrand’s global presence and expertise in freight forwarding, the development of
tracking tools and ocean freight
management.
The global flexitank market,
covering all types of products, has
been growing at a rate of 25% per
annum of late. The management
teams at J F Hillebrand and TOD
aim to combine their organisational skills and complementary
services to maximise future potential growth.
IN THIS ISSUE
NEWS
Gaussin trailer order
ICTSI wins Ecuador deal
Dublin’s Indonesia move
Freightliner into Oz
Singamas tank plant open
CIMC bulker hatch licence
3
7
10
16
18
20
PORT DEVELOPMENT
Spain sets fast pace
Ambitious in Galicia
Mota-Engil in Portugal
Trenitalia for Italian ports?
23
26
27
28
CARGO HANDLING
Lift truck makers busy
31
New tractor transmission 33
ROLL-ON/ROLL-OFF
Ship orders roll in
37
Russians target new cars 38
INTERMODAL
Enter Lorry-Rail
41
REEFER INDUSTRY
New reefer from MCI
42
CONTAINER INDUSTRY
Leaseco manoeuvres
43
TANK CONTAINERS
Lessors fill orderbooks
44
Common codes for tanks? 46
Section 1
14/5/07
10:28 am
Page 2
WorldCargo
news
CARGO HANDLING NEWS
Six for Sea-Invest from Gottwald New overheight
from Bromma
Belgium-based port operator and
logistics service provider Sea-Invest has taken delivery of six Generation 5 G HMK 6407B fourrope grabbing harbour mobile
cranes from Gottwald Port Technology at various terminals in
Belgium and France.
Two cranes for coal, scrap and
various bulk products have been
supplied to Compagnie Belge de
Manutention (CBM) in Gent,
two cranes for minerals handling
have gone to Antwerp Bulk Terminal (ABT Antwerp) and one
crane each for various bulk handling duties have gone Sogema
Rouen and Carfos Marseille
Caronte.
The cranes, which have recently entered commercial operations or are in various stages of
assembly, are the first Generation
5 cranes that the Belgian company has ordered from Gottwald.
According to Eddy Haerens, chief
engineer of Sea-Invest, the deciding factors in selecting them were
centred around the excellent experience gathered with Gottwald
A Gottwald G HMK 6407B in operation with Sea-Invest in Gent
mobile harbour cranes of previous generations, complemented
by technical expertise, outstanding service and short delivery
times.
“When choosing new equipment to modernise our cargo
handling fleet, the long mutually
beneficial relationship with
Gottwald was important,” said
Haerens. “Sea-Invest has a long
tradition in cargo handling and
as a logistics service provider. We
are committed to offering the
highest quality standards and that
demands a strong partner.
“We trust that the new cranes
will help our terminals to handle
even greater volumes of cargo,
lower costs and deliver the best
possible service to our customers,” he said.
The G HMK 6407 B 4-rope
grab mobile harbour crane is one
of the numerous versatile variants
of Gottwald’s new Generation 5
launched in spring 2006.
● Tartous International Container
Terminal (TICT), the new affiliate set up by International Container Ter minal Services Inc
(ICTSI) to run the 10-year container ter minal concession
awarded by the Syrian government last November, has ordered
two LHM 400 harbour mobile
cranes from Liebher r-Werk
Nenzing. Operations at TICT are
slated to begin next month and
the new harbour mobiles are
slated to arrive in July. Rated at
41t SWL out to 13-wide
Panamax outreach, the new
cranes are part of a US$39M investment commitment by ICTSI
over the life of the concession.
Bromma Group has added a fully
automatic overheight frame, designated OSX45, to its comprehensive range of spreaders and
ancillary products.
The fact that the frame is fully
automated, says Bromma, gives it
a significant operating advantage
over partially automated or
manual overheight frames. It is
capable of handling a wide range
of typical overload scenarios and
has been designed for easy access,
since terminals can locate the
OSX45 closer to the operator by
parking it wherever they wish.
All functions are managed using simple control levers from the
crane cabin, so no employees are
necessary on the ground. Crane
operators can easily check that
everything is where it is supposed
to be by looking at the twistlock
indicator that is clearly visible from
various directions.
Only the (un)locking of the
twistlocks is required for its simple
operation. It can be fitted onto all
existing crane spreaders and has no
hydraulic system, so it is easy to
service and has low life cycle costs.
Bromma also reports “surging
demand” for its Marthon all-electric yard crane spreaders from
OEMs and terminal operators
alike. Konecranes has ordered
eight in connection with an order for RTGs in Abidjan, while
nine are going to SRC Cartagena
for service on Kalmar RTGs.
Liebherr has ordered six in connection with its new RTG contract from Portroe Stevedores,
Dublin and nine are going to
Madras and SAPO (in Durban) for
service on Kalmar RTGs.
Other recent orders include 18
for Saudi Arabia from ZPMC, 10
for APM Terminals in Algeciras,
nine for Massport from
Konecranes, 19 for Santos and
Valparaíso from Kalmar, 12 to
Laem Chabang from ZPMC, 14
toYilport from Mitsui-Paceco and
10 for Marport from Gulf Piping
(IMCC).
ABB’s new orders
worth US$65M
ABB has provided more information on the scope of its new
contracts to supply automation
and electrical systems for a total
of 74 cranes to be installed in
ports in Asia by ZPMC in 2008
and 2009 (see WorldCargo News
March 2007, p2).
Its orders, worth US$65M,
cover full crane automation and
support systems, including controllers and software, low voltage
AC motors and drives, electrical
transformers and switchgear. It
will also carry out project management, engineering, customer
training and commissioning.
As previously reported, the
new projects concer n 20
unmanned RMGs for Taipei
Port Container Terminal Corporation in Taiwan, 42 similar
RMGs and 12 twin 40ft ship-
to-shore cranes for Hanjin Shipping in Busan. “These projects
make excellent use of standard
ABB products and application
expertise,” said Veli-Matti
Reinikkala, head of ABB’s process Automation division. “By
combining safety, reliability and
energy efficiency, we are helping customers meet the strong
demand for quality investment
in port facilities.”
Building on its extensive experience in crane systems and
the success of similar projects in
Hamburg, Rotterdam, Singapore, Tokyo and Kaohsiung,
ABB will also apply a range of
innovative sensors, control and
vision systems and optimum
motion algorithms that offer
maximum productivity for automated terminals.
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Liebherr Container Cranes Ltd
has further strengthened its position in the Gulf region of the
Middle East with an order for two
superpost-Panamax cranes for
Port Khalid, Sharjah, UAE. The
contract was placed with Liebherr
by the Department of Seaports
and Customs and are scheduled
for delivery during the second
quarter of 2008.
Waterside outreach is 48m, rail
span is 30.48m, backreach is 15m
and lift height above rail is 37m.
SWL is 60t under twin lift spreader
and 70t under hookbeam. Maximum hoist speeds are 60 and 150
m/min and trolley speed is 180 m/
The new cranes for Port Khalid will
be similar to those supplied by Liebherr
to Exólgan in Buenos Aires
min. Crane travel speed is 45 m/
min. Crane drives are Liebherr DC
and the cranes will be equipped
with Liebherr’s Visuscan crane
management system.
The cranes will work alongside the existing Liebherr equipment that currently operates at the
terminal, consisting of two quayside cranes and four RTGs. Port
Khalid’s sister port Port of
Khorfakkan has a total of 10
Liebherr ship-to-shore gantry
cranes and 12 RTGs installed.
April 2007
Section 1
8/5/07
1:24 am
Page 3
WorldCargo
news
CARGO HANDLING NEWS
Brigantine expands services More hybrid drive RTGs
Brigantine Group, a subsidiary of Maersk
(Far East), is expanding its service offerings in the marine and container terminal equipment markets to include specialist equipment overhaul and refurbishment and “riding teams” for the overhaul
of auxiliary engines at sea.
Hong Kong-based Brigantine has a
long history in the container repair and
refurbishment industry with container depots, container repair facilities and ship repair and parts refurbishment workshops in
Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Qingdao
and Ningbo in China, Tanjung Pelepas in
Malaysia and Kaoshiung in Taiwan.
It is now extending those operations
to include the service and repair of marine and container terminal equipment,
offering services including general yard
equipment maintenance, such as wire rope
changes, preventive inspections and more
comprehensive overhauls, such as complete diesel genset and spreader overhaul.
The move into port services coincides
with Brigantine’s intention to offer vessel operators “riding teams for the overhaul of auxiliary engines” from July 2007.
Brigantine’s head of marine services,
David Schaus, explains that optimallymanned vessel crews that are prevalent in
today’s environment often do not have
the experience, or the time, to perform
major 15,000-20,000 hour overhauls on
auxiliary engines.
“Using Brigantine’s considerable expertise in four stroke engine repair and
overhaul as a base, we are investing in
comprehensive OEM sponsored training,
specialised OEM tools and afloat apprenticeships in order to build a complete
four stroke engine maintenance solution.
As the name implies, the Riding Teams
will embark on ships worldwide at the
designated port and ride the ships in or-
der to overhaul the auxiliary engines,”
said Schaus.
The service will begin with one team
in July and expand to four teams by the
end of the year. Schaus says Brigantine’s
commitment to service from an Asian base
will give it a considerable advantage over
other overhaul options.
Demand for marine-related service
work such as engine overhauls fluctuates significantly. By combining marine
work with terminal services, Brigantine
considers it will be able to achieve a
higher utilisation of skilled labour and
offer a more cost effective service to both
markets.
K-Line subsidiary Daito Corp has ordered three hybrid drive RTGs from
TCM Corporation and Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding Co for the Ohi
Terminal in Tokyo and Honmoku Terminal in Yokohama. K-Line says they
will be the first 1 over 5 hybrid drive
RTGs to operate at Japanese terminals.
The first crane, built by TCM, is
scheduled for delivery to Honmoku in
August and the other two, built by TCM
and Mitsui, are expected to arrive at Ohi
Terminals One and Two in October and
November this year.
The new RTGs feature a regenera-
tive drive package designed to reduce fuel
consumption by reusing energy generated during the lifting process. Compared
to conventional designs, the hybrid model
is expected to lower fuel consumption
by 40-50%, and cut carbon dioxide emissions by the same amount.
If the performance of the RTGs
meets expectations, Daito plans to order two more for Ohi Terminal and one
for Honmoku in 2008.
As reported in the September 2006
issue of WorldCargo News (p7), NYK is
also trialling a 1 over 4 version of TCM’s
hybrid drive RTG at the Ohi Terminal.
www.gottwald.com
DPW trailer
order for
Gaussin
France-based Gaussin Manugistique, part
of Gaussin SA, has provided detals of the
129 in-terminal container trailers it will
be supplying to DP World in Jebel Ali.
As reported in last month’s WorldCargo
News (p6), the trailers are being sourced
for the new terminal currently under
construction in Jebel Ali, to which Kalmar
is supplying 84 PT122 terminal tractors.
All the ground-handling equipment is
slated for delivery in the summer.
The trailers are Gaussin High Wheel
Trailers type HW 45ft/60t and, says
Gaussin, feature a very robust chassis that
can support loads up to 60t with very low
bending, thus minimising delays to
(un)loading containers particularly during twinlift operations.
The design, which has been patented
by Gaussin, was specially developed for
DP World Jebel Ali and customised to its
requirements following testing and approvals of two prototypes by the operator. Gaussin says its main objective is to
stay close to customers and respond
quickly to their requirements for customised products. The trailers will be fabricated in the Jebel Ali Free Zone.
The order strengthens the old relationship between Gaussin and DP World (then
Dubai Ports Authority) that goes back to
the early 1980s when it delivered its first
terminal trailer to Jebel Ali. Since then
many trailer have been delivered to terminals now operated by DP World.
As previously reported (see WorldCargo
News July 2006, p2), last year Gaussin was
listed on the “free market” section of the
Euronext stock exchange in Paris and it
says that is has now built up a strong financial position that will help it achieve
its ambitious development plan.
The company states that all its main
market segments for trailer designs - seaports, intermodal, airports and various industrial sectors (automotive, steel, paper, airports, shipbuilding, nuclear plants
and aerospace), with designs ranging from
1t to 500t SWL, are progressing well.
Further orders for multiple deliveries of port trailers are believed to be close
to finalisation. The company is also developing a range of value-added services
including trailer rental, trailer refurbishment, after sales services and maintenance
contracts.
“Gaussin offers a complete range of
services from analysing customer needs
to designing new products,” says marketing and sales director André Ishac.“Environmental, regulatory, technical and economical constraints are taken into consideration and followed up whenever
change occurs.”
April 2007
The New Generation 5 –
Mardas¸ Knows Why
07
une 20
19-21 J
B27
Stand
With the new Crane Generation 5 from
Naturally with diesel-electric drive. Customised
Gottwald Port Technology, port handling
for professional container handling to serve
is advancing into new dimensions at the
ships up to post-Panamax vessels. An example
Port of Mardas¸ in Istanbul, Turkey, for example.
of customer oriented, efficient solutions. An
Recently, two new Generation 5 G HMK 7408
example taken from the many different variants
Mobile Harbour Cranes with lifting capacities
of the new Generation 5 from Gottwald. For all
of 100 tonnes were added to the fleet now
types of handling, all ship sizes and terminals
comprising seven Gottwald Harbour Cranes.
of every size.
Gottwald Port Technology GmbH • Postfach 18 03 43 • 40570 Düsseldorf, Germany
Phone: +49 211 7102-0 • Fax: +49 211 7102-3651 • e-mail: info@gottwald.com • www.gottwald.com
.
.
¸
¸ • Ambarli Liman Tesisleri; Yakuplu Beldesi, Mardas¸ Iskelesi • 34524 Istanbul, Turkey
Mardas¸ Marmara Deniz Isletmeciligi
ˇ A.S.
Phone: +90 212 875 27 32 (pbx) • Fax: +90 212 875 27 38-39 • e-mail: info@mardas.com.tr • www.mardas.com.tr
Generation 5 – You Name it, We Crane it
3
Section 1
14/5/07
10:38 am
Page 4
WorldCargo
news
CARGO HANDLING NEWS
Jade TOS for DCT
DCT Gdansk in Poland has become the first customer in Europe
for New Zealand-based Jade software Corporation’s Jade Master
Terminal (JMT) Terminal Operating System (TOS).
Backed by Australia’s Macquarie Global Infrastructure Fund
II, DCT is building a deepwater
terminal in Gdansk with a capacity of 500,000 TEU/year in Phase
I, including a 150,000 TEU ro-ro
berth. A logistics park is being
developed close to the terminal
and further land is available to
expand annual capacity to 1M
TEU. The terminal is scheduled
to open this summer
Jade has its JMT application
running at several New Zealand
ports (South Port, Port Otago, Port
Nelson, CentrePort (Wellington),
Port of Tauranga and Northport),
two locations at Long Beach in
the US and is about to go live at
its first site in Australia.
DCT will be its biggest customer by throughput but Jade’s
Dave Quenell says the company
has plenty of experience with
JMT in other high volume applications. In New Zealand, for
example, the largest log handler,
Toll Owens, uses JMT to manage several terminals with an integrated system.
“The log system puts through
between 12 and 18M individually
tracked items every year, and has
been doing so since 2002. Each of
these items is treated in exactly the
same way we treat a container or
item of general cargo.They are received at the gate, processed, automatically planned and located into
the terminal, placed aboard vessels
and exported,” Quenell said.
Furthermore, to demonstrate
that JMT can support a high-volume container operations, Jade has
run benchmarks on the system
receiving through gate, placing
into yard and exporting containers at over 3M TEU constantly for
days on end. “We are confident
about handling a larger terminal,
with full control over the software
including the database engine itself ” Quennell added.
DCT’s technical manager
Siemens secures
military contract
Artist’s impression of DCT Gdansk, which is scheduled to open this summer
Robin McLeod (for merly of
Thamesport) said, “After looking
at many alternatives, DCT selected
Jade as our TOS partner because
of the innovative nature of its basic concepts, its clear development
road map and value for money.We
have been very encouraged by the
level of cooperation so far and we
look forward to successful implementation.”
JMT is a fully integrated system that runs in a fully object-oriented environment that allows a
terminal to handle containers, logs,
bulk, break bulk, ro ro and harbour
management from a single database;
in this case enabling DCT to handle its ro-ro and lo-lo containers
with the same system.
JMT operates on Windows/
Intel and Linux hardware and terminals that need to add more users can add an application server
that manages the load between the
clients and the database. For very
large systems, JMT scales by adding in additional CPUs or migrating to a larger server.
Other DCT-specific requirements include a Polish user interface, and integration with
Polish Customs and DCT’s financial system.
Siemens is working on a contract to provide an electric
winch motor control system and
energy storage system for a crane
designed to move shipping containers on US Navy (USN) ships
while they are at sea.
The contract was awarded by
Oceaneering Advanced Technologies (OAT), a division of
Oceaneer ing Inter national
(OII), which was selected by the
US Office of Naval Research to
conduct technology research in
support of the USN’s HiCASS
Concept, a key component in its
offshore floating port Sea Base
Project. Sea Base ships would
eliminate the need for the navy
to secure foreign ports for supply lines.
OAT will use the Siemens
equipment to test theories for
moving containers between
ships while they are at sea. The
scope of the contract includes
the delivery of all drives and
PLC controls and an energy
WorldCargo
news
VOLUME 14 NUMBER 4 • ISSN 1355-0551
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HIDEO NAKAYAMA, NAKAYAMA MEDIA INTERNATIONAL INC.
Telephone: +81 3 3479 6131 Fax: +81 3 3479 6130
E-Mail: nmi@tka.att.ne.jp
KOREA AGENT
JO, YOUNG-SANG, BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS INC.
Telephone: +82 2 739 7840 Fax: +82 2 732 3662
E-Mail: biscom@unitel.co.kr
SPAIN AGENT
ANDREW DOUGALL, COMUNICADO SL
Telephone: +34 942 52 86 62 Fax: +34 942 52 86 77
E-Mail: andrewdougall@comunicadopublishing.com
./6!4%#(
storage system as an integrated
package in a 30ft ISO container.
Siemens will also provide the
motors, brakes and gearboxes
and be responsible for the mechanical integration of the system with the winch drum.
“Siemens’ ability to simulate
the complete system operation
provided us with the confidence
that each component was sized
to meet the needs of the application,” said Ed May, OII’s program manager. “The energy
storage capabilities of the new
system will provide the large
amounts of power required to
move large containers at sea,
while reducing the draw from
the ship’s grid.”
Luis Illan, manager of Siemens Marine Solutions in the
US added: Through our ability
to deliver solutions that fit our
customers’ needs and prompt
turn times, Siemens has developed a strong working relationship with OII.”
Konecranes
books RTGs
for Odessa
Konecranes has reported an order
for four RTGs from HPC
Ukraina, in Odessa. HPC Ukraina,
an affiliate of HPC Hamburg Port
Consulting GmbH is a new customer for Konecranes and has ordered 40t SWL, 16-wheel machines stacking 6+1/1 over 5.The
order is worth around E5M and
the machines are slated for delivery by next January.
HPC Ukraina has been handling containers in Odessa since
2001 and, as reported in the February 2007 issue of WorldCargo
News (p31), has permission to codevelop, with the Merchant Seaport of Odessa, a new container
terminal. As also previously reported, the company is due to take
delivery of a post-Panamax quayside gantry crane from Liebherr
shortly. Konecranes has also reported new orders for RTGs from
new and existing customers in
Spain (see p23 this issue).
● Konecranes has come up with a
way to release capital for its rapidly growing core business by selling a substantial share of its Finnish real estate in Hyvinkää and
Hämeenlinna. It has signed a letter of intent regarding their sale
to and lease back by the Swedenbased property company Sagax
AB.The deal, worth €30B, is subject to approval by the two municipalities concerned, but it is
expected that they will waive their
pre-emption rights in the near
future.Transaction costs and taxes
will amount to around €12.8B,
allowing some €17.2B to be invested in the business.
PUBLISHED BY WCN PUBLISHING
Northbank House, 5 Bridge Street, Leatherhead, Surrey KT22 8BL,
England. Telephone: +44 1372 375511 Fax: +44 1372 370111
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Entire contents © WCN Publishing 2007
4
April 2007
Section 2
8/5/07
1:34 am
Page 5
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Section 2
14/5/07
10:59 am
Page 6
WorldCargo
news
CARGO HANDLING/PORT NEWS
Portroe Stevedores opts Adelaide tastes big benefits...
for Tideworks software
Tideworks Technology Inc has
won a contract to install its terminal management software at
the Portroe Stevedores facility in
Dublin, Ireland.
Portroe is moving to an RTG
yard system and has ordered new
machines from Liebherr
equipped with DGPS as part of a
series of changes designed to lift
annual capacity from 200,000 to
350,000 TEU by 2008.
The terminal currently operates a container terminal management system from Softpak of the
Netherlands but will replace this
with the Tideworks Mainsail Terminal Management System,
Spinakker planning system and
Traffic Control, Forecast and
GateVision products.
Tideworks has a number of
European customers using the
multi-purpose terminal software
developed by Sonu Software Solutions, which Tideworks pur-
chased in 2004, but Portroe will
be only the second European installation of Tideworks’ US-developed container terminal software, following ICTSI’s Baltic
Container Terminal (BCT) in
Gdynia, Poland. Installation will
be managed between Tideworks’
office in Rotterdam and headquarters in Seattle.
Portroe evaluated several systems before deciding on Tideworks. “We chose Tide-works,”
said CEO Eamonn O’Reily,“because it is a leader in the industry
with proven, best of class solutions
and an experienced team that
truly understands our business
and operational objectives.”
Tideworks’ president Michael
Schwank added that Portroe’s
“operations and technology goals
mesh nicely with our business
model, so we’re extremely pleased
to be selected from the many software providers considered.”
First all-electric
Siag spreaders
Italy-based crane components
specialist Siag SpA is scheduled to
deliver this month the first three
of seven all-electric, ship-to-shore
crane spreaders it is building for
US shipping line Horizon Lines.
As previously reported (see
WorldCargo News June 2006, p1),
these orders were taken over by
Siag when it purchased the production rights, designs and intellectual property of Bubenzer Systems, after the latter company was
6
forced to withdraw from the market in January 2006.
Siag is now producing the
spreaders at its factory near Milan
and the first three units will go
into service with Horizon Lines
in Puerto Rico.
It is not known whether other
known orders in hand that
Bubenzer Systems had (eg for
Felixstowe, VTE Genova and a
customer in South Korea) were
retained by Siag.
South Australia has tasted the first
fruits of the economic benefits to
flow from Port Adelaide’s A$45M
channel deepening project with
the arrival of the 4,250 TEU ANL
WARRINGA, the largest container
ship to ever enter the port on a
regular service.
The new ship berthed at
Outer Harbour and was able to
load to its 12.6m maximum
draught after the main shipping
channel was deepened by 2m last
year under a private-public sector
partnership between Flinders
Ports and the State Government.
Flinders Ports CEO Vincent
Tremaine said for many years
South Australia had been “the
poor cousin” to mainstream shipping trade routes, so “the advantages of having these larger, faster
ships include Adelaide on their
schedules cannot be understated.
The ANL WARRINGA is the largest containership ever to enter Port Adelaide
“We are confident that the arrival in Adelaide of larger ships is
just the tip of the iceberg in attracting further improved shipping
services,” Tremaine said.
The new ship’s arrival followed
an announcement from ANL and
its parent company, CMA CGM,
of a new service (NEMO) that
would link Adelaide to North
Europe and the Mediterranean.
“The arrival of ANL WARRINGA
further highlights the need for the
Port of Melbourne to complete
the deepening of its main channel at Port Phillip Bay as a deepened Melbourne port will allow
these larger ships to full-load at
all ports on the Australian coast,”
Tremaine said.
...as critics pan Melbourne SEES
TheVictorian government has released the Port of Melbourne
Corporation (PoMC)’s remarkable 15,000-page supplementary
environmental effects statement
(SEES) into the proposed deepening of the Port Phillip channel,
but the move appears to have inflamed rather than mollified environmentalists’ opposition.
Almost exactly two years after
the government accepted the findings of an independent panel review and halted the channel deepening project pending new investigations, the unveiling of the SEES
saw a resumption of hostilities between the pro and anti camps.This
time the pro position is more unequivocal after the PoMC spent
A$114M up until the end of 2006
on the original EES, a trial dredging programme, and the SEES.
“The SEES into proposed
channel deepening indicates that
the project will not have longterm environmental effects on
Port Phillip Bay,” the PoMC said.
“It also shows that the economic
case for the project is very strong.
The project will ensure Melbourne
remains Australia’s most cost-effective port per container.”
I n l a u n c h i n g t h e S E E S,
CEO Stephen Bradford said extensive scientific environmental investigations show there would be only
short-term effects on sections of the
bay and that the channel deepening project would be limited to
around one per cent of the bay area.
The SEES showed the use of
larger more efficient cargo ships
would reduce transport costs and
see savings passed on to exporters
and consumers. This would be ac-
companied by a reduction in fuel
consumption and subsequently
lower greenhouse gas emissions.
“While dredging will have
some visible short-term effects,
our studies show they can be managed and any effects will be temporary,” Bradford said.
The total project cost is now
estimated at A$763M.“While the
SEES contains a range of potential costs for the project, the final
cost is subject to an evaluation
process for the SEES and the government’s final decision on the
way forward,” the PoMC said.
“The project would primarily
be funded by port users (ie cargo
owners and shipping lines), and
pending the necessary approvals,
PoMC would hope the project
could start in early 2008 and be
completed by the end of 2009.”
New port
for India
Krishnapatnam Port Co (KPC),
a family-owned start-up on India’s east coast, will invest
US$1.6B in a new container and
bulk port in a move designed to
profit from the country’s growing trade with China.
The port, close to the sea lanes
linking Asia with the Arabian Gulf
and Europe, is due to open for
containerships in June 2008 and
will be completed by 2011. Initial annual container handling
capacity will be 1M TEU, Mahesh
Goel, head of KPC’s container
business, said.
The port expects to handle
around 200,000 TEU in the first
year of operation and 450,000
TEU in the second year.
KPC, owned by Hyderabadbased businessman CV Rao and
his sons, aims to compete with
Chennai port, 180 km to the
south, for the container business.
Chennai has predicted its traffic
will rise to 1.5M TEU by 2010.
“Lines are telling us they want
a port with better facilities.
Charges at Krishnapatnam will
definitely be lower than at
Chennai,” Goel said.
The port, which has a 50-year
licence, is adjacent to the 4,000
hectare Andhra Pradesh special
economic zone, a duty-free
manufacturing enclave.
Goel said that research by
London-based Drewry Shipping
Consultants has shown that by
2019 KPC could handle 5.6M
TEU a year. “There is just not
enough capacity on India’s east
coast. Container trade between
the east coast of India and China
is growing at 8% a year and existing ports can’t cope,” he said.
April 2007
Section 2
8/5/07
1:41 am
Page 7
WorldCargo
news
PORT NEWS
ICTSI wins Ecuador concession CMHI into Vietnam
Philippine port operator International
Container Terminal Services Inc (ICTSI)
has decided not to form a strategic alliance with Singapore’s PSA International
to operate container and multipurpose
terminals at Ecuador’s Guayaquil port.
“We are going solo on the Guayaquil
container terminal,” ICTSI spokeswoman Narlene Soriano told WorldCargo
News after the Guayaquil Por t
Authority(APG) said it had decided to
award a 20-year concession to the Manila-based company.
Soriano said talks with PSA regarding a strategic alliance at Guayaquil port
had been abandoned. A PSA spokesman
declined to comment.
Ecuador aims to make Guayaquil -
TLF calls for
port reform
On the back of a 15-day strike that has
brought chaos to the Port of Marseilles,
France’s federation of transport and logistic operators (TLF) has joined forces with
port and shipping employers’ organisations
to call for root and branch port reforms.
The Marseilles port authority (PAM)
came under pressure from the government in Paris to do all in its power to
resolve the dispute, to avoid political embarrassment during the Presidential election campaign .
To many observers, this was tantamount to caving in to unreasonable demands that will continue to put France
on the back foot as far as port investments
are concerned, and the country will continue to lose out to its neighbours.
Only 36% of French o/d container
traffic passes over French ports and TLF’s
president Alain Bréau says the blame for
this lies firmly with the unreliability of
the ports themselves, as conditions and
costs of inland transport are internationally competitive.
Most private investors are still required
to exercise “responsibilty without power.”
For example, they are required to invest
in new cranes but their drivers and maintenance teams remain employees of the
port authorities, just as if they were still
buying the cranes themselves and leasing
their operation to stevedoring firms.
The Marseilles’ strike was triggered
when Gaz de France obtained approval to
employ its own trained personnel for ship
handling and unloading operations at its
planned new LNG terminal in the port, as
is already the case at its LNG terminal in
Saint Nazaire.This move would affect the
status of just five PAM employees, but nevertheless was judged by the unions as unacceptable and the image of the port has
again been dragged through the mud.
the 11th largest port in Latin America one of the region’s top gateways through
expansion and modernisation, as it seeks
to tap growing cargo flows from China
and within the region.
ICTSI will invest about US$150M to
upgrade the port, which handles 70% of
Ecuador’s foreign trade cargo and 93%
of its containerised cargo.
The existing container terminal at
Guayaquil has four berths of 600ft each,
handling nearly 450,000 TEU annually.
The port also has a multipurpose terminal, equipped with five berths, and a bulk
terminal.
ICTSI agreed to pay the APG a roy-
alty of US$10.43 per TEU handled,
around 73% higher than the US$6 minimum set in the bidding rules.
The bid was also much higher than
what Hong Kong-based Hutchison Port
Holdings recently agreed to pay under a
30-year concession to build and operate
Terminales Internacionales de Ecuador
at the Port of Manta.
ICTSI had initially agreed to form a
strategic alliance with PSA to bid for the
concession at Ecuador’s largest port in a
process that began last year. Of the 10
bidders expressing interest in the port
project, seven were prequalified but only
ICTSI submitted a bid.
In its first overseas port venture, Hong
Kong-based China Merchants Holdings
International (CMHI) will build a sixberth container terminal in Vietnam
with Vietnam National Shipping Lines
at a cost of US$1B.
CMHI’s parent, China Merchants
Group, has signed an agreement with
Vietnam’s largest shipping line to build
the terminal and a logistics centre at the
greenfield Ben Ding Sao Mai Seaport,
90 km south of Ho Chi Minh City.
CMHI chairman FuYuning said two
berths will be built in Phase I over the
next two years at a cost of US$300M,
with the remaining four coming online
in Phase II.Total handling capacity will
be 3M TEU/year.
“We hope to obtain the majority
stake from our parent. However, details
will be announced only after the parties have signed the final agreement,”
Fu said.“This represents our first attempt
to invest outside of China in a significant way,” Fu said.
Fu was speaking after CMHI announced that its 2006 profit rose 7% to
HK$2.54B(US$326M) on turnover of
HK$4.36B, which was up from
HK$2.97B in 2005.
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APM Terminals has signed another main
purchase agreement with ZPMC for shipto-shore container gantry cranes and
other terminal equipment. Terms of the
deal were not disclosed.
APMT, which operates over 45 container terminals worldwide, has purchased
more than 200 cranes from ZPMC.
“ZPMC has clearly played an important
strategic role in the development of our
container ports around the world,” commented Eric A Sisco, president,APM Terminals North America, at the signing ceremony in Shanghai. “They have consistently kept pace with our growth, our
timelines, our budgets and our operational
expectations.”
ZPMC’s president Guan Tongxian
stated,“Our products have been supplied
to customers all over the world,and in this
way we are pleased to have also created
strong friendships all over the world. It is
our goal to provide our customers with
only the best, world-class manufactured
products.”
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7
Section 2
8/5/07
1:42 am
Page 8
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IN ACTION 36
Section 3
8/5/07
2:28 am
Page 9
WorldCargo
news
PORT NEWS
Israel master plan
In anticipation of receiving governmental approval for its newly-completed, 50year strategic development master plan,
the Israel Ports Company (IPC) has announced an international tender for design, consulting and general supervision
services required for the development of
the first phase terminal that should be
completed and ready for operations by
2015. The design services include breakwater, quay, dredging, land reclamation
and terminal development.
The plan, developed over the last 18
months by IPC together with experts
from Royal Haskoning and other consultancies, has already been approved by
the Ministry of Transport. It includes programmes for the further development of
Haifa and Ashdod ports in a phased approach based on demand growth, with
special emphasis on introducing increased
competition and participation of the private sector in the Israeli port industry.
The plan highlights include the potential to develop a number of independent container terminals with a minimum
quay length of 1000m and a terminal
depth of 450-500m, to accommodate vessels up to Suexmax size (14-15,000 TEU).
It considers the potential to attract more
transhipment as well as transit traffic, as
changes in the geopolitical situation may
allow. Road and rail improvements that
will improve inland cargo delivery times
are also covered.
Auckranga
off, for now
As anticipated in last month’s issue of
WorldCargo News (p13), the proposed
merger between the ports of Auckland
and Tauranga is off after the latter withdrew from formal discussions last month.
Port of Tauranga chairman John Parker
said that while both ports had invested a
significant amount of time and money
considering the merits of the merger, after some 12 months Auckland Regional
Council (ARc), the owners of Ports of
Auckland Ltd, had been “unable to decide whether the merger is worth undertaking, or the terms on which they would
be prepared to pursue a merger. So reluctantly, the Port of Tauranga has withdrawn from the discussions.”
Port of Tauranga chief executive Mark
Cairns commented that economic and
financial modelling demonstrated the
merger would generate significant financial benefits to be shared with customers
and shareholders alike. “The merger
would also generate substantial public
benefits; reducing CO2 emissions, facilitating better opportunities for coastal
shipping, and making a start on the inevitable port rationalisation that needs to
occur in New Zealand in the future with
the advent of larger, faster container vessels,” he said.
Local commentators say municipal
politics played a major part in the failure
of the merger to get off the ground. It
has emerged that it was Auckland that
originally proposed the plan, although
some believe interest was keenest when
Auckland believed it would lose Maersk’s
North Island traffic to Tauranga.
However, when Maersk opted for
Auckland over Tauranga in December
2006, ARC indicated that it believed
Auckland should command a bigger
share of the “megaport,” a proposal unacceptable to Tauranga - and, as commentators have pointed out, an unworkable proposition if stakes were to change
every time a service was won or lost.This
was underlined shortly after the merger
was abandoned when Hamburg Sud announced it was shifting its southbound
Trident service calls from Auckland to
Tauranga.
While some consider the North Island megaport proposal is not completely
dead, negotiations between the South Island’s Lyttelton Port Company and Port
Otago Ltd (Port Chalmers/Dunedin) are
said to be well-advanced, away from the
glare of publicity.
April 2007
IPC’s CEO Shlomo Brieman explained
that “a long term port development plan is
necessary in light of the competition between various shoreline users such as the
military, power plants, ports, desalination
plants, recreational and urban development
for Israel’s limited coastline.
“Considering that over 98% of Israel’s international commerce moves via its
seaports and that container traffic has been
and is expected to continue to double
every 10 years, failure to plan ahead and
dedicate coastline for seaport development will inhibit the country’s economic
development and competitiveness in the
global marketplace.”
Four new ZPMC container cranes at the Port
of Wilmington were put into operation earlier
this month, loading and unloading containers
from theYang Ming Marine Transport vessel YM
SHANGHAI. Bought at a cost of US$33.2M,
the 100ft guage cranes can handle an 18
container-wide deck stow compared to a
maximum of 13 for the four existing container
cranes. and are the key components of
Wilmington’s five-year, US$143M container
terminal expansion programme.“With the 42ft
shipping channel, berth improvements, new reach
stackers and new cranes, the Port of Wilmington’s
expansion programme over the next three years
will nearly triple our capacity based on current
volumes. Additional improvements in terminal
operations and more open paved storage areas
will boost the capacity of Wilmington’s container
terminal to 400,000 TEU annually,” said
Thomas J Eagar, CEO of the North Carolina
State Ports Authority
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9
Section 3
8/5/07
2:37 am
Page 10
WorldCargo
news
PORT NEWS
Dublin in APMT eyeing Ports of Auckland?... MTL signs
Dalian deal
Indonesia
Port of Dublin Ltd has signed a
Memorandum of Understanding
to form a joint venture to develop
a new container port in Sabang
in the Indonesian province of
Aceh. It will be the Irish port operator’s first investment overseas.
Already involved in reconstruction projects in the Indonesian province devastated by the
Asian tsunami in 2004, Port of
Dublin is teaming up with Indonesian state port operator, Pelindo
I, to develop Sabang as international hub port. Investment in the
facility is put at over US$400M.
The joint venture, Sabang Hub
International Port, will be owned
by Port of Dublin and the Sabang
Zone Management Agency
(BPKS), which manages the area
under consideration for the port.
“We have already started fixing the
existing facilities. By the first quarter of next year, we will start upgrading the port,” said Bernardus
R Djonoputro, Dublin’s representative in Indonesia.
Sabang is located on the north
west side of the mouth of the Malacca Strait, and, with its strategic
location on one of the world’s
busiest shipping lanes, the Indonesian authorities believe it can be
transformed into a major hub, negating the need for large vessels
from Europe to transit the Strait
to Singapore.
The plan calls for the extension of the existing 180m quay at
Sabang to 2,500m over the next
five years and the installation of
15-25 ship-to-shore cranes..
“We will build the port gradually, and expect to complete the
whole complex in three to five
years,” Bernardus said.
10
Not long after Ports of Auckland
pulled out of merger talks with
rival Port of Tauranga (see p9), it
is being reported in New Zealand
that the AP Moller-Maersk
Group/APM Terminals (APMT)
is interested in buying terminal(s)
in New Zealand.
Maersk officials in NZ have
declined to comment, but local
media are speculating that Maersk,
which after acquir ing P&O
Nedlloyd (P&ON) has as much
as a 60% share of the local market,
would be better off with its own
facilities in Auckland.
After the acquisition of
P&ON, Maersk went through a
lengthy review while it considered whether to consolidate its
North Island volume at Auckland
or Tauranga, prompting the ports
to enter into merger discussions
in a bid to combat its bargaining
power.
Maersk pre-empted the talks
by announcing it would move the
bulk of its volume to Auckland,
but the whole process changed the
political climate of the ownership
debate as it became clear that NZ
has too many container terminals
As it has a 60% share of the NZ market following the takeover of P&ON,
analysts say that Maersk would be better off with its own facilities in Auckland
and is spreading capital too thinly.
When exporting giant
Fonterra said it had more to gain
by working with Maersk than
having two competing suppliers,
some politicians applied this
thinking to the port level and said
they would support port mergers,
which would have previously
been unacceptable on competition grounds.
It is understood that Auckland
has been in negotiations for sale
before, with Patrick Stevedores before it was acquired by Toll, but the
asking price at that time was
thought too high. Prices now are
even higher, but local analysts are
touting the theory that NZ exporters would receive better service if
Maersk did not have to share a terminal with other services. This is
completely contrary to the image
of an “independent” terminal op-
...mulling west coast site
APMT is reportedly considering
Coos Bay in Oregon, a port in
British Columbia and another in
Mexico as it looks for a North
American new west coast gateway.
All the ports have reportedly
signed confidentiality agreements
with APMT, but Coos Bay Senator Joanne Verger showed APMT
documents to local press and the
story spread quickly over the
Internet.
APMT has told Coos Bay it
needs 275 acres and 4,000ft of
berthing space for a 2M TEU/year
terminal.Verger is sponsoring a Bill
to use US$60M of Oregon Lottery money to fund dredging and
widening of Coos Bay’s shipping
channel and other requirements as
part of the Oregon Gateway
project. For its part, the Port of
Coos Bay has contracted BST Associates to develop an impact study.
In briefing Coos Bay Commissioners, BST’s Paul Sorenson said a
cargo study it carried out in 2002
did not consider containers for
Coos Bay, but the market then
changed significantly with a sustained period of double digit container growth.
“As a result, the ability and availability of cargo facilities along the
west coast has been stretched. Shippers and ocean carriers realised this
erator APMT works hard to foster.
A sale could allow some of
Auckland’s key waterfront land
holdings to be separated from port
operational areas. This is another
issue in the spotlight after the
Government attempted to persuade Auckland regional bodies to
build a rugby stadium partially on
port land, lending credence to the
argument that the port does not
need all the prime waterfront estate it currently occupies.
Regardless of any sale, Auckland has struggled to cope with
the increase in volume since
Maersk chose it over Tauranga and
has suffered from congestion on
both the quayside and landside.
The port has taken steps to
improve the situation, including
hiring more staff, bringing forward
its reclamation programme, extending the reefer area at Bledisloe
by 20% and sharing vessels across
its two terminals. It is trying to
encourage more truckers to deliver containers to its inland terminals for draying to the port at
night and, for the longer term, is
negotiating with truckers to implement a booking system.
so they are looking for new opportunities.What we know now is
different from what we presented
in 2002 when we took a very brief
look at containers and suggested it
may not be the best opportunity
for the port. So much has happened
to the industry in the intervening
five years; we admit that we missed
that one,” Sorenson said.
Sorenson estimated that a new
terminal would cost US$400700M. Dredging, however, is a
significant obstacle as the channel needs to be taken from 37ft
to 51ft deep.
Modern Terminals (MTL) of
Hong Kong has signed an agreement with Dalian Port Co (DPC)
and the city’s government to develop a container terminal at
Dayao Bay north harbour at China’s eighth largest container port.
If the project is approved by
Beijing, the two companies will
form a joint venture and complete two berths by the end of
2010, making Dalian the third
Chinese port, after Shenzhen and
Taicang, where MTL will have
operations.
MTL and Hong Kong-listed
DPC also signed a framework
agreement with the Dalian government for “strategic cooperation” to develop more container
terminals at Dayao Bay.
DPC said it will work with
MTL to take the lead role in developing the phase three project,
while the city government will
provide the partners with “preferential treatment policies and
support.”
The agreement covers the development of the middle section
of the 7 km north shore area.The
entire Dayao Bay complex is expected ultimately to have 21
berths with a combined annual
handling capacity of 10.5M TEU.
The north harbour development faces the south harbour terminals where Phase I has been
developed by DPC and Singapore’s PSA International.The two
are also investors in the four-berth
Phase II terminal with APM Terminals and Cosco Pacific.
DPC also plans to go ahead
with Dayaowan Container Terminal’s Phase II, which will involve
the construction of up to seven
berths on the south shore.
April 2007
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Section 3new
15/5/07
10:48 am
Page 12
WorldCargo
news
PORT NEWS
Charleston sets
emission goals
The South Carolina State Ports
Authority (SCSPA) has signed a
voluntary agreement with the
South Carolina Department of
Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) aimed at reducing
emissions at Charleston’s existing
and future port facilities and improving air quality in the
Charleston region.
DHEC will appoint an official
to coordinate air quality consultation meetings and develop and
conduct training for SCSPA personnel on an annual basis, while
SCSPA will carry out an emissions
inventory of existing facilities
within the next 18 months.
SCSPA will also fund the purchase, installation and utility costs
Tuapse for sale
for a particulate matter monitoring station to be owned and operated by DHEC, purchase cleaner
equipment for the Navy Base Ter-
Charleston is replacing older, dieselelectric powered cranes with power
cable-fed equipment. These four
ZPMC units, seen arrving last month,
will be operational by the end of June
minal, use cleaner engines when
rebuilding existing equipment or
replacing retired equipment, evaluate the use of cleaner fuels, such as
biodiesel and ULSC, evaluate the
future use of “cold ironing” ships
at berth, carry out “anti-idling” initiatives and include contractor
guidelines in construction bid
documents to minimise air impacts.
In the past few years SCSPA has
replaced a large number of older
RTGs with modern, fuel-efficient
designs from Konecranes and is also
replacing older, diesel-electric container cranes with all-electric models. These include the four
superpost-Panamax cranes from
ZPMC that arrived only last
month, two for Wando Welch Terminal and two for North
Charleston Terminal.
Eastern
Landbridge
plan to sell the state’s 20% stake
in the Merchant Seaport of
Arkhangelsk (AMTP). February’s
public sale offer attracted no bids.
Vladislav Kochetkov, an analyst with Finnam Investment, said
the asking price was seen as fair,
even though, counter-intuitively,
it actually went up to US$3.8M
from the US$2.6M originally
sought by the government in the
first offer in 2004.
He said that Norilsk Nickel,
a key customer and majority
owner of the port, saw no point
in buying additional shares and,
by the same token, a 20% stake
would not mean much for third
parties as they would not be able
to influence the decision-making
process, nor obtain substantial
dividends.
AMTP’s deputy director general Viktor Vorobyov said the port
is determined to retain its present
niche role handling Arctic supplies and ex/im cargoes, irrespective of the share issues. As previously reported in WorldCargo
News (February 2007, p32), containerised automotive parts from
Korea are now being feedered to
Arkhangelsk from Hamburg by
CMA-CGM/F E Trans for onward rail shipment to the Kia assembly plant in Izhevsk, as a complement to the main TSR
intermodal landbridge routing.
Canadian security slammed
Canada’s Standing Senate Committee on National Security and
Defence has released a damning
report on the state of the country’s port security, entitled An Update of Security Problems in Search
of Solutions.
Four years ago the same committee made a number of recommendations on port security that
it says the government responded
to largely with “weasel words...
designed to create the illusion that
something is being done to solve
a problem, when it isn’t.”
The new report deals with six
problems at Canadian ports related to security, the first of which
is organised crime. The committee states: “It is no secret that
Canada’s ports are riddled with
organised crime, and nobody
seems to be doing much about it.
The problem with widespread
JST SERVICES
Novolipetsky Metallurg ical
Works (NLMK), one of Russia’s
leading steel makers, has put its
69.4% shareholding in the Merchant Seaport of Tuapse (TMTP),
the largest stevedoring company
in Russia’s second largest Black
Sea port, up for sale.
Last year the company handled 14 mt of oil and oil products and 6.9 mt of dry cargoes.
Negotiations are under way with
RosNeft, Russia’s second largest
oil company, which owns and operates TuapseNefteProdukt
(TNP), the port’s US$100M oil
terminal.
Last year TMTP declared its
highest ever dividends on record.
NLMK acquired TMTP from
SeverStalTrans
for
over
US$100M, but has decided to dispose of this non-core asset, as
metals make up just 10%-20% of
Tuapse’s overall volume. However,
some analysts doubt whether
NLMK, controlled by Vladimir
Lisin, would want to sell up completely. The port sector in Russia
remains extremely profitable and
the ports are a vital link in the
steel maker’s production and sales
chain, said one analyst. Russia’s
Federal Property Management
Agency owns 25% of TMTP.
● For the second time, the Russian Federal Proper ty Fund
(RFFI) has had to withdraw its
criminality, of course, is that it requires holes in the security system to be successful.And any hole
a criminal can take advantage of,
a terrorist can take advantage of.”
In 2002, the committee noted
that Canada’s ports are used to
move contraband in and out of
Canada and recommended compulsory screening of all port employees and candidates for security risks. This could remove a
large percentage of the current
workforce as the committee
heard testimony that 15% of
longshoremen and 36% of checkers at Montreal, 39% of 500
longshoremen at Halifax and
nearly 54% of the workforce at
Charlottetown had cr iminal
records.
Since 2002 the government
has introduced a Marine Transport Security Clearance Program,
but the committee found that the
agency responsible for assessing
criminal history made no recommendations to Transport Canada,
the body that administers security clearances.
It also said that requiring only
workers in so-called “secure areas” to have a clearance was impractical.
In calling for a full public enquiry on port security and the
introduction of security cards
similar to the US TWIC programme the committee noted:
“There seems to be a level of
comfort among labour unions,
the business community and port
authorities with the way things
are done now. None of them are
anxious to reform a system that
is currently providing plenty of
income for everyone - including
crooks.
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12
April 2007
Section 4
8/5/07
6:35 pm
Page 13
WorldCargo
news
PORT NEWS
WCT-ZP row deepens
Maria Le Roy has resigned her position
as chairwoman of Zeeland Seaports (ZP)
as the political row with the Port of Rotterdam (HbR) over the Westerschelde
Container Terminal (WCT) inVlissingen
deepens (see WorldCargo News January
2007, p6 and February 2007, p10).
Mrs Le Roy, a former Economics
Minister for the Province of Zeeland, resigned after the ZP Works Council passed
a vote of “no confidence,” reflecting her
clash over WCT with ZP’s managing director Hans van der Hart. Viewed as far
too sympathetic to HbR’s aims and ambitions, she had already been accused in
the Zeeland Parliament of failing to back
van der Hart.
As previously reported, HbR wants
ESM (its joint venture with ZP) to cover
the development and marketing of container ter minals in the whole of
Vlissingen, whereas ZP, which suspects
that HbR wants to kill off WCT, wants
to involve HbR only in that project.
From HbR’s perspective this is crazy projects in the existing port area include
a 53-hectare 600,000 TEU/year facility
planned by Sea-Invest (with Zuid-Natie
as a minority partner) and a 2.5M TEU/
year facility planned by Verbrugge.
Restricting ESM to WCT would cut
Rotterdam off from the real action at ZP
and limit it to the costly and uncertain
WCT project that would in any case
compete directly with Maasvlakte II.
Martin Verbrugge, the CEO ofVerbrugge
Terminals, deliberately announced his
company’s project just one week before
the provincial parliament was due to debate WCT, which has already had to go
back to the drawing board once because
it breached environmental regulations.
The Verbrugge project is much less
expensive as the company already operates more than 80 hectares in the port,
while WCT would require ZP to invest
in an entirely new, 1800m deep water
quay wall. It is estimated that Verbrugge’s
1800m container quay wall would cost
ZP just €80M to build, compared to
€330M for the same length at WCT.
However, the point is that the Verbrugge
ter minal site is already owned by
Verbrugge, so ZP would be deprived of
any ground sale income to earn back its
investment in the quay wall. (Surely this
begs the question why Verbrugge should
not pay for the quay wall itself).
The ZP works council has now accused HbR of orchestrating Verbrugge’s
“publicity stunt,” while the provincial
government is trying to buy time by delaying a decision on the rural planning
laws that scuppered the first WCT planning application until October.
One Opposition MP has suggested
that a political majority for WCT no
longer exists in Zeeland, but to avoid loss
of face it would be better for the Dutch
high court to kill another planning permission bid, rather than for the Zeeland
government to withdraw the project itself.This would also constitute “force majeure” and release ZP of any obligation
to pay compensation to HbR for its contributions to the preparation project for
the development..
Meanwhile, PSA-HNN, which inherited the WCT operating concession
from Hessenatie, is sitting on the sidelines. PSA-HNN has stated that it is still
interested in pursuing the project. However,WCT has roughly the same timeline
as the first phase of Maasvlakte II, for
which PSA-HNN is one of the
shortlisted candidates.
Vuosaari operator deals
The Port of Helsinki has signed agreements with two of Finland’s leading
common user port operator groups for
the new harbour at Vuosaari.
An agreement for the eastern section of the new port was signed with
Finnsteve Oy Ab in February and this
has been followed by an agreement covering an area occupying 21 hectares in
the western section with Niinisaaren
Kehitysyhti Oy, a joint venture of
Steveco Oy and Multi-Link Terminals
Ltd Oy (Containerships).
Both agreements cover ro-ro services and lo-lo services for containers and
general cargo.
The port has also reached the necessary agremeents with the relevant customs authorities, the National Board of
Customs and the Southern Customs
District, on customs operations and facilities at Vuosaari. Inspection buildings
occupying 1800 m2, 1000 m2 and 800
m2 will be built respectively in the inspection area adjacent to the gate, in the
gatehouse and in the passenger terminal, and there will also be a 1000 m2
customs office.
Construction work on the new gatehouse complex and passenger terminal
has started, along with other foundation works, provision for utilities, etc.
Privatisation
at last for
Cape Verde?
After many years of inactivity, the government of Cape Verde is again keen to
reform and privatise its port sector.
An IMF-backed plan to privatise the
main ports in the archipelago was shelved
in 1999 when the government decided
to include its plans for port reform within
a wider strategy of developing the country as a transhipment centre. Little progress
has been made on either front in the intervening eight years, but the government
has revealed plans for a major shake up of
the port sector.
At present, two state owned companies dominate the sector. Empresa
Nacional de Administração dos Portos
(Enapor) manages a string of ports on
different islands, but the only port facilities of international importance are located at Mindelo on São Vicente and
Praia on Santiago.
The other company, Arca Verde, is responsible for inter-island shipping. The
Minister of Infrastructure and Transportation, Manuel Inocencio Sousa, says that
the government plans to privatise both
companies by the end of this year.
Plans have also been drawn up to increase capacity of the Praia container terminal from 15,000 to 80,000 containers/year by 2010.This would help tackle
delays at the port. However, it is not clear
whether this expansion programme will
form part of the contract that will be
awarded to companies bidding to take
over Enapor.
At the same time, the government
hopes that Mindelo can be turned into a
transit port for the entire region, although the plan is more of an aspiration
than a concrete proposal at present.
April 2007
13
Section 4
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6:35 pm
Page 14
Section 4
14/5/07
11:41 am
Page 15
WorldCargo
news
PORT NEWS
African ports need
private participation
Some form of private sector participation
in terminal operations is essential if Africa’s ports are to become more efficient, according to a senior Maersk Line manager.
Speaking at the 5th Intermodal Africa
Conference in Durban last month, Jan
Scheck, Maersk Line’s area line and operations manager in South Africa, said productivity had improved wherever some
private partnership in terminal operations
had been introduced.
Scheck said very little infrastructure development has taken place in Africa despite the 10-25% year-on-year volume
growth already experienced and despite an
expected doubling of container throughput over the next eight years.
“The majority of terminals in Africa
are still managed by parastatal organisations
and there has been little involvement of
the private sector, while customs procedures remain outdated and unable to cope
with increased container flows,” he said.
“Container handling in Africa costs the
African manufacturer a staggering 290%
more than his European competitor and
lack of infrastructure is clearly an inhibitor
to accelerated trade growth,” he added.
In 2005, Africa (including the Indian
Ocean islands) had seven terminal bottlenecks - Apapa in Nigeria, Matadi in Congo,
Luanda in Angola, Cape Town and Durban in South Africa, Mombasa in Kenya
and Port Sudan in Sudan, said Scheck.
Last year, the number of bottlenecks
had increased to 15, and included Dakar
in Senegal, Conakry in Guinea, Tema in
Ghana, Cotonou in Benin, Pointe Noire
in Congo, Walvis Bay in Namibia, Dar
es Salaam in Tanzania and Port Louis in
Mauritius.
Carl Robert Eckelmann AG is
extending its so-called “container
taxi” barge service that links terminals
within the port of Hamburg, with the
introduction of a second barge that
should become operational in May.
“By utilising existing waterways for
the booming container business we
reduce truck congestion and cut CO2
emissions,” stated Robert Eckelmann,
chairman of the Eckelman group.
“Road transport within the port has
almost reached its limit; the
Köhlbrandbrücke, in particular, is
often congested and needs to be
relieved by more ecological means
of transport.”The second container
taxi measures 76.50m x 11.18m
and can accommodate 54 20fts or
24 x 40ft, equivalent to around 50
truck loads
DBFT on
schedule
The Port of Rotterdam and ECT have
stated that work on the new new Delta
Barge Feeder Terminal (DBFT) at the
Maasvlakte, to cater for inland navigation
vessels, coasters and and other small container vessels, is proceeding as planned.
The quay wall is about 800m long, almost the width of the Delta Peninsula.
Around 700,000 m3 of spoil from the
Yangtze harbour dredging project has
been dumped in the area. After a settling
period, cables and pipe lines will be laid
and the terrain will then be hard-surfaced.
ECT expects to receive the first three
quay cranes in March next year and they
should start operations in the middle of
the year.The terminal has a slated annual
capacity of 300,000 TEU during the first
phase, increasing to 900,000 TEU on
build-out. Total investment is €145M, of
which one third has been spent on the
quay wall and other basic infrastructure.
Meanwhile, test calls have already
started at Kramer’s new 500,000 TEU
Rotterdam Container Terminal, which
has the same vocation as DBFT.The terminal should be officially inaugurated
next month.
ZPMC’s ZHEN HUA 5 has delivered 12
more automated RMGs for ECT’s
Euromax Terminal, under construction in
Rotterdam. The first phase of the new
terminal, with a capacity of 2.3M TEU,
will come into operation next year,
comprising 58 robotised RMGs in the CY
(of which 16 have already arrived), 16
quayside gantry cranes - 12 23-wide (64m
outreach) superpost-Panamax cranes and
four 36m outreach cranes for barges and
feeder ships - two RMGs for the IY, all
from ZPMC/ABB, and 96 diesel-electric
AGVs from Gottwald Port Technology
April 2007
15
Section 4
14/5/07
11:30 am
Page 16
WorldCargo
news
INLAND/INTERMODAL NEWS
New crane for Mulhouse
France’s Upper Rhine Port of
Mulhouse-Rhin, operated by
CCI Sud Alsace Mulhouse, has
commisioned a new barge-toshore, trimodal gantry crane for
its Ottmarsheim container terminal, where river-borne container
traffic reached almost 50% of total throughput of 135,000 TEU
last year.
Built by Joseph Paris and fitted
with Siemens drive controls, the
widespan crane cost €4.5M and was
co-financed jointly by the CCI,
Voies Navigables de France and
local and regional government
bodies. It is rated at 45t under hook
and 40t under Elme spreader.
Waterside outreach of 35m allows two barges to berth alongside
each other, while rail span of 50m
provides exceptional stability as well
as service for one truck lane and
one rail line and several container
rows (1 over 5 under the 23.4m lift
height). Another truck lane is provided under the 15m backreach.
The crane is of a double girder
design and, for maximum flexibility, the trolley can be rotated up
The new widespan, trimodal crane represents an investment of €4.5M
to 210deg. Rated load hoist speed
is 60 m/min, and trolley speed and
long travel speeds are both 120 m/
min.With its long travel of 300m,
the crane covers an area of 19,500
m2, compared to 4000 m2 for the
smaller Noell crane (the first
trimodal crane at Otmarsheim),
which is now showing signs of
fatigue after 10 years of service.
To improve container handling
services further, bulk traffic, which
was previously handled nearby
has been transferred elsewhere.
Together the three port sites of
Mulhouse-Rhin - Otmarsheim,
Ile-Napoléon and Huningue - represent France’s third biggest river
port complex (after Paris and Strasbourg), with Ottmarsheim alone
accounting for 6 mt in 2006, more
than half of which (3.6 mt) was
moved by river.Total non-river traffic handled at Mulhouse-Rhin
came to 3 mt, split roughly equally
between road and rail.
B-Cargo’s Freightliner in Oz
iron will
SNCB’s B-Cargo has run the first
train in many years on the “historic” Iron Rhine route between
Antwerp and the Ruhr.The “symbolic” train was booked on a
“spot” basis, to take advantage of
the recently completed renovation
of a stretch of track in Holland
between Budel and Weert.
However, because the Dutch
are still refusing access to the
stretch between Roermond and
Dalheim, ostensibly to protect the
Meinweg nature reserve, the train
had to go via Venlo and onto
Viersen and Duisburg.This circuitous route meant the journey took
6 hours instead of the 3 hours it
would take via Meinweg.
However, B-Cargo has effectively put the Iron Rhine back on
the agenda and is lobbying for the
Meinweg path to be opened. It is
understood that German forwarders are particularly interested in
conventional wagon trains for
shipments via the Iron Rhine over
the Port of Antwerp.
The UK’s Freightliner has established an Australian subsidiary
and flagged its intentions to enter the local rail freight market,
but industry insiders are puzzled
about a logical entry point.
Company searches show that
two directors of Freightliner
Australia Pty Ltd were formerly
linked to NSW-based shorthaul
operator, Silverton Rail, which
was last year taken over by and
merged with Western Australia’s
South Spur Rail to trade as
Southern and Silverton.
Freightliner is said to have
20% of the UK rail freight market but it is not clear how it might
break into the Australian sector,
where Toll’s Pacific National controls most national intermodal
services and Toll’s own forwarding arms are major users.
Other significant players are
SCT, Linfox/FCL and QR National, while a number of
smaller operators (such as S&S)
cover regional services.The UK
company would have to buy an
existing operation to achieve
any feasible momentum, observers say.
Raising the degree of difficulty, the Freightliner name is
almost exclusively known in
Australia as a DaimlerChrysler
heavy truck brand and has no
rail associations.
Berlin targets rail
intermodal growth
Port of Berlin operator Behala
plans to double intermodal rail
traffic volumes within the next
two years to 80-90,000 shipments/year by promoting new
connections with Poland, other
Baltic destinations and the Mediterranean.
Rail intermodal links started
up in Berlin-Westhafen just two
years ago and there are now regular connections with Unna/
Bönen (for DHL) and the container terminals in Bremerhaven
(Konrad Zippel Spedition) and
Hamburg,
Behala wants to encourage
new links with Lübeck and
Sczeczin and the rail terminal is
to be enlarged to allow access for
trains up to 700m long. A new
train formation area will be provided and an RMG equipped
Behala is aiming to build up rail
intermodal volumes
with combi-attachment for swap
bodies and containers will be acquired, as part of an €5-6M investment programme
Behala has also applied for a
rail operating licence and negotiations are tunder way with DB
Netz AG to improve the infrastructure of the BHUL and
Moabit (BMOA) rail freight terminals.
Container barge traffic is also
on the agenda. Infrastructure improvements are required to increase traffic on the barge links
with Hamburg and Sczeczin.
Bridge clearances on the waterway approaches to Westhafen currently rule out any progress and
are a matter of urgent attention.
Forklift trucks, reachstackers
and
terminal equipment
Cap. Type
9 t.
SMV SL6/7ECB90
12 t.
Clark DPL120
12 t.
Svetruck 1260-30
15 t.
Hyster H16.00XM-6
16 t.
Svetruck 16120-38
32 t.
SMV SL32-1200
Reachstackers
10 t.
SMV SC108TA
41 t.
Sisu RSD4118 4TL
41 t.
Kalmar DC4160RS4
42 t.
Linde C4230TL5
45 t.
Linde C4535TL5
Terminal tractors
25 t.
Mafi MT25 4x2
30t.
Sisu TR182 4x4
35 t.
Terberg RT28 4x4
Year
06
94
02
05
99
05
Liftheight
19000 mm
4000 mm
4000 mm
3750 mm
5000 mm
4000 mm
03
96
93
02
04
15800 mm
12100 mm
12400 mm
15900 mm
16000 mm
97
03
97
1000 mm
1000 mm
1000 mm
N.C.NIELSEN A/S · DK-7860 BALLING · DENMARK
TEL. +45 99 83 83 83 · FAX +45 97 56 46 24
w w w. n c - n i e l s e n . d k · l i n d e @ n c - n i e l s e n . d k
16
April 2007
Section 5
8/5/07
6:40 pm
Page 17
WorldCargo
news
INLAND/INTERMODAL NEWS
Railion in new joint ventures
Railion Deutschland has set up new joint
ventures with operators in Poland and
Sweden to reduce the number of interfaces in cross-border traffic.
East West Railways Sp zoo, based in
Wroclaw, is a joint venture with PCC Rail
SA (an affiliate of Duisburg-based PCC
SE), which already operates 105 locos and
some 3600 wagons in Poland. Subject to
regulatory approvals, planned start-up is
in the second half of this year and, by the
end of the year, the new operation should
have a fleet of 20 class 232 diesel locomotives that have been specially adapted
to the requirements of the Polish network.
The company will focus on freight
transport within Poland and cross-border operations to Germany but, according to Railion AG’s chairman Dr Klaus
Victoria buys
back rail
The Victorian government has honoured
its November 2006 election pledge and
bought back the lease of the state’s rail
freight network, paying Toll-controlled
Pacific National A$133.8M.
“The original 45-year lease signed by
the Kennett government with Freight
Australia was fundamentally flawed in that
it did not promote competition, allowed
parts of the rail network to deteriorate
and hindered the government from accessing the track to carry out infrastructure upgrades,”Transport Minister Lynne
Kosky said. “The new arrangements will
allow the Bracks government to proceed
with investments in major rail projects and
upgrades.”
Projects now on the government’s
agenda include the upgrade of the important Mildura line to improve links to the
port of Melbourne from important grain,
wine and fruit-producing areas, and a rail
bypass of the city of Wodonga to speed transit on the main north-south east coast line.
The government has immediately
committed A$25M for urgent maintenance but industry regards this as less than
a third of the spend required to bring the
rail freight network up to standard.
State-owned regional rail operator V/
Line will take on responsibility for the
network and will conduct a full operational review and safety assessment. Completion of the deal and the formal transfer will take place in early May.
New logistics
centres in Oz
Kuehne & Nagel (K&N) has opened a
A$40M logistics facility in Melbourne as
part of a strategy to expand in Australia
and across the Asia-Pacific region.
The largest single consignor through
the port of Melbourne, K&N said its decision to locate its new warehousing and
distribution facility in Melbourne was the
site’s proximity to Australia’s largest container port, the city’s international airport
and the arterial Metropolitan Ring Road.
Located on 47,000 m2, the new centre provides 20,000 m2 of warehouse space
and 23,000 pallet positions. The facility
has RFID capability, hydraulic loading
docks, and a vertical carousel system for
spare parts storage and easy picking.
In a next phase of construction, warehouse space at the site can be extended
to a total of 30,000 m2. The new facility
also houses K&N’s national head office
as well as administration, sales and contract logistics departments.
Meanwhile, Toll Group has opened a
new Logistics Optimisation Centre
(LOC) in the northern Melbourne suburb of Campbellfield to service automotive customers in Australia. The 17,500
m2 centre will provide a wide range of
automotive logistics services to companies such as Ford, Toyota, Holden and a
number of domestic and international
component manufacturers and suppliers.
April 2007
Kremper, it will complement Railion’s
“cooperative relationship” with Polish national railroad PKP rather than compete
against it, as the object is to secure new
cargoes for rail that currently go by other
modes. He added that Railion and PKP
Cargo are pressing ahead with a number
of projects aimed at boosting rail freight
between Germany and Poland.
The second joint venture is with
Swedish operator Green Cargo (ex-SJ
Gods), whereby Green Cargo will acquire
a significant shareholding in Railion
Danmark. The entire Scandinavian corridor can thus be served by a single company and its fleet of multi-system loco-
motives will be increased in the mid-term.
● The rail ferry VILNIUS is now calling
weekly, as planned, at Baltiysk, near
Kaliningrad, as an extension to the twice/
weekly service between Sassnitz (Mukran)
and Klaipeda introduced last July. As previously reported, the rail ferry is operated as a joint venture of Railion
Deutschland, DFDS and Russian Railways, with a weekly capacity of 85 and
49 Russian freight cars to Klaipeda and
Baltiysk respectively. The crossing to
Baltiysk takes around 16 hours.
Railion has set up new joint venture operations
in Poland and Sweden
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17
WorldCargo
news
INLAND/INTERMDAL/TANK CONTAINER NEWS
Toll split gets ACCC nod
The Australian Competition and
Consumer Commission (ACCC)
is set to approve Toll Holdings’ split
into separate operating and infrastructure companies, after the
company agreed to an explicit list
of conditions (see WorldCargo News
December 2006, p6).
“The revised variation offered
by Toll incorporates a series of
changes that respond to concerns
arising from the ACCC’s market
inquiries on the variation initially
proposed by Toll in December
2006,” the Commission said.
Under the proposed variation,
Infrastructure Co will be entitled
to retain 100% of railco Pacific
National and Toll will retain its vehicle transport business and its interest in PrixCar.
The variation will also involve
Toll and Infrastructure Co giving
various undertakings to ensure effective separation between the two
companies.These include that, until 31 March 2011,Toll and Infrastructure Co will each have separate and independent boards of directors and neither company will
have a shareholding in the other;
all current directors of Toll will be
required to sell their shareholdings
in Infrastructure Co within an
agreed timeframe; and all directors of Infrastructure Co will be
required to sell their shareholdings
in Toll.
There will also be restrictions
on the ability of Toll or Infrastructure Co to employ or second senior management of the other
company and all contracts between Toll and Infrastructure Co
must be on arm’s length and nonexclusive terms.
Toll anticipates that after the
variation to the undertakings is
formally accepted by the ACCC,
the company will proceed to put
the scheme proposal to shareholders. If approved by shareholders
and the Supreme Court of Victoria, the restructure will be effective towards the end of June 2007.
The ACCC’s likely acceptance
of the Toll plan has been roundly
criticised by a number of competitors, including former Patrick
managing director Chris Corri-
gan, now chairman of Kaplan
Funds Management’s KFM Diversified Infrastructure & Logistics
Fund, which in January led a
A$200M acquisition of 75% of DP
World’s Australian bulk and auto
stevedoring operations and 50% of
its container logistics business.
“The two [Toll] companies
will have an intimate knowledge
of each other’s plans and objectives,” Corrigan said. “No doubt
they’ve managed to structure
things in a way that is supportive
of each other’s aims. I think the
whole thing is just a charade.”
Kaplan has announced further
acquisitions from DP World,
reaching agreement to buy an effective 24.5% interest in Australian Amalgamated Terminals (originally a joint venture between
P&O Ports and Patrick), as well
as a 25% effective interest in
Northern Shipping & Stevedoring. AAT provides berth and
port facilities in Brisbane, Sydney,
Melbourne, Tasmania and Adelaide, while NSS has operations
in Townsville, Cairns and Mackay.
To Rupert
by George
Canada’s CN Rail has announced
it will spend C$20M on a new
transload operation and intermodal rail terminal in Prince
George, British Columbia.
The new container terminal
being developed by Maher Terminals at Prince Rupert, 500 miles to
the west, is expected to provide opportunities for CN and shipping
lines to attract backhaul loads from
Prince George.
“The Prince George facility is
ideally located to tap backhaul export opportunities, filling empty
containers moving to Asia via
Prince Rupert with lumber, panels, woodpulp and paper, as well as
ores, plastics and metal products,”
said Peter Marshall, CN senior vice
president,Western Region.”
The new facility will have an
84,000 ft2 warehouse and 10 acres
of outdoor storage adjacent to a
new intermodal yard. CN is planning a daily service to Prince
Rupert when the terminal opens
in autumn this year.
Consent Equipment AB
The specialist in operational
leasing of Terminal, Transport
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www.consent.se
Singamas opens
new tank plant
The new Singamas tank container manufacturing plant in
south China officially opened
for business at the end of last
month.
Over 300 guests, including
local governmental dignitaries,
representatives of major tank
container operators and lessors,
component suppliers and inspection companies attended the
opening ceremony and viewed
the facilities at Shunde in
Guangdong Province first hand.
Developed with technical assistance from Netherlands-based
Flaxfield Trading BV, which was
set up by a number of former
Consani personnel, capacity at
the new plant will be ramped
up to an optimum, 5,000 units
per year. With orders for 750
tanks already received, output in
the first year of operation is expected to be over 1,000 units.
To ensure consistency of
production quality, UK-based
Davlis was contracted to supply
the most up to date Quality
Control Manual and in depth
QC training.
Tanks are built on a flexible
production line, which allows
the simultaneous production of
different tank types, including
20ft T11 (IMO 1) frame and
beam tanks, European swap
tanks and 30ft units, all built to
designs developed by Flaxfield.
Production at the new Singamas
tank plant will be ramped up to
5,000 units/year
Four newbuild tanks were
on display at the opening ceremony and were delivered to
customers immediately following the event. Orders in hand
are for 24,000, 25,000 and
26,000 litre T11 units, prototypes of which have successfully
undergone static, dynamic and
full cycle testing by Biomar Systems, located in Stellenbosch,
South Africa
Two recently completed prototypes were also on show,
which will increase capacity
options from16,000 through to
26,000 litres.An order for refrigerated tanks will be built in the
near future, while baffled and
compartmented tanks can also
be offered.
Coinciding with the official
opening of the new plant,
Singamas president and CEO SS
Teo also announced the opening of Singamas’s new Group
Technology Centre, which is
housed on one floor of the tank
plant’s administration building.
Forty experienced engineers
and technicians will carry out
research, design, development
and testing at the new centre,
which also includes a materials
testing laboratory.
München
Neue Messe
7
June 15th 200
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Ha
in
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Please visit
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Consent Equipment AB
PO Box 4143, SE-400 40 GOTHENBURG, Sweden
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UK Office: Consent Equipment UK Ltd, Prince Henry House,
Kingsclere Business Park, KINGSCLERE, Hampshire, RG20 4SW
Phone: +44 1635 299999, Telefax: +44 1635 299993
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April 2007
Section 5
14/5/07
12:02 pm
Page 19
WorldCargo
news
TANK CONTAINER NEWS
ITCO wins Fort Vale upgrades Highlift footvalve
Canadian
exemption
Transport Canada has issued a permit to
a number of named members of the International Tank Container Organisation
(ITCO), allowing the entry into and use
within Canada of certified UN portable
tanks owned or operated by the companies concerned.
Transport Canada issued the Permit for
Equivalent Level of Safety after consultations with ITCO in which the organisation explained that portable tank containers designed, manufactured, inspected,
tested, marked and repaired in accordance
with the provisions of the 14th Edition of
the UN Recommendations on the Transport of Dangerous Goods Model Regulations are transport units which are as safe
in operation as those which are in compliance with the Canadian regulations.
The Permit for Equivalent Level of
Safety is valid for a period of two years
for all those ITCO members who applied
for the exemption and showed their tank
containers to be in compliance with the
UN Recommendations.
In general terms,Transport Canada’s
Transportation of Dangerous Goods
Regulations are aligned closely with those
provisions in the UN Recommendations
governing portable tanks. However, there
are variances, such as those in Sections
5.10 and 5.14. ITCO is currently participating in a Transport Canada portable
tank working group, which is reviewing
those areas where the domestic and international portable tank provisions differ, with the aim of aligning them fully.
ITCO is confident that such alignment can be achieved before March 2009
when the Permit for Equivalent Level of
Safety that Transport Canada has issued
to its members is due to expire.
Fort Vale has introduced a new, modified
version of its established Highlift footvalve
for tank containers.
The same valve design features incorporated in Fort Vale’s new 3in, 90°
Tankstream footvalve for the road tanker
market have been applied across its full
range of internal Highlift footvalves for
tank containers, which, the company says,
offers a number of advantages: The cast
construction of the valve’s new “opencage” design renders this part stronger and
more robust in operation and less prone
to damage in transit; the cam pickup design feature ensures that the lifting finger
stays central to the poppet and relocates
with 100% accuracy when the seal or
spring has been replaced, thus saving repair and maintenance time; and the cast
body construction ensures clean internal
lines, reducing potential product trap.
A Fortyt seal is fitted for maximum
cargo compatibility and resilience, while
a Hastelloy seal face or replaceable seat
kit can be supplied to ensure increased
protection against crevice corrosion,
greater product compatibility and improved valve longevity. It is also possible
to supply the Highlift footvalve with a
fusible crank for automatic valve closure
in the event of fire engulfment.
The new package includes a 3in
footvalve, which can be reduced to 2in
specifically for fitting to offshore tanks.
● Fort Vale has opened new parts centres
in Russia, Spain and Indonesia.The company’s long-established Moscow-based
sister company has been expanded to become a distribution centre for tank container components for the Russian market, while in Spain, Fort Vale’s new distribution partner is Equipos Vehiculos Ind
Sole SL in Barcelona, where spare parts
and consumables for the road tanker and
tank container markets will be available.
In Indonesia, CPR Jakarta is the latest
addition to Fort Vale’s list of Asian distribution centres.
The latest version of Fort Vale’s Highlift
Footvalve for tank containers
Experience the
progress.
New Talke
depot ready
The Talke name continues to spread worldwide
The Talke group will open its new
Zwijndrecht Liquid Logistics Centre close
to the Antwerp port area in the next few
weeks. The facility has been developed
in conjunction with Transport De Jongh,
Talke’s Belgian subsidiary, to provide a full
portfolio of liquid logistics services across
the Benelux region and to serve as an
import/export interface point.
The new Zwijndrecht depot covers
an area of 30,000 m2, some 12,000 m2 of
which is covered storage and warehouse
space. Divided into four separate fireproof
sections, the facility offers four drumming
lines, temperature-controlled storage and
the ability to handle all classes of dangerous goods with the exception of explosives and radioactives.
The services on offer at Zwijndrecht
include inventory management, packing
and repacking of bulk dangerous goods,
labelling, sampling and shipping, tracking
and tracing, drumming and dedrumming,
customised product treatment and customs services.
Talke established its first international
branch in Antwerp in 1987, since which
time the group has gone on to pioneer
the formation of large-scale chemical logistics sites at many locations worldwide.
April 2007
Liebherr-Werk Nenzing GmbH
P.O. Box 10, A-6710 Nenzing / Austria
Tel.: +43 50809 41-725
Fax: +43 50809 41-447
reachstacker@liebherr.com
www.liebherr.com
The Group
19
Section 5
14/5/07
11:52 am
Page 20
WorldCargo
news
CONTAINER INDUSTRY NEWS
IAS launches InterTurn
Smart box update
International Asset Systems
(IAS) has launched a new, webbased service that allows container operators to make quick
and easy street turns of their
empty equipment.
Called InterTurn, the service
is claimed to be the first available
to automate the much-talkedabout “virtual container yard”
(VCY) concept, in which empty
containers are moved directly to
the next loading point instead of
first being drayed back to a terminal or rail ramp.
IAS estimates that at any
given moment, 30-40% of intermodal trucks are hauling empty
boxes in the US - the result of an
inefficient system in which containers are routinely returned to
port terminals or container depots after being unloaded.
InterTurn eliminates those empty
trips by matching available containers “on the street” with shippers’ needs for equipment.
Because of the current difficulties in arranging street turns
- numerous faxes, phone calls
Further details have been released
concerning the development by
Maine Secure Composites LLC
of a next generation “smart” container under a contract placed by
the US Department of Homeland
Security as part of the Safe Container (Safecon) programme (see
WorldCargo News February 2007,
p21).
The so-called Composite
Anti-Tamper Material (CATM)
maritime container features a
standard steel ISO frame with
thermoset composite sidewalls,
roof, base and endwall into which
a series of sensors is embedded.
In the event of an intrusion
through any part of the container,
the sensors send an alarm to a
communications/tracking system
of the type developed by Savi
Technology, GE Security and
others.
The intrusion detection system, dubbed COBRa, has been
extensively tested under laboratory conditions and been shown
to be highly robust and capable
of withstanding static and dy-
and emails - IAS estimates that
only around 2% of street-turn
opportunities are currently being realised.
The first virtual container yard
programme is being sponsored by
the ports of Los Angeles and Long
Beach together with the Alameda
Corridor Transportation Authority in Southern California. In the
programme, IAS is working in
partnership with eModal LLC,
which is responsible for contact
with the Southern California
trucking community.
A central feature of
InterTurn is the ability to integrate it with ocean carriers’
equipment management systems. As the carrier’s system updates the status of each container,
the information is transferred to
InterTurn and made available to
approved trucking companies
via the InterTurn website.
Four major shipping lines, including CMA CGM, Mediterranean Shipping Co and US Lines
have already signed up for the
InterTurn service.
namic forces well beyond those
required by ISO standards for
marine containers.
The fact that the security system is totally hidden also means
that it is completely tamper-proof
and anyone trying to access the
container illegally would be unaware of its presence.
A prototype 20ft unit built by
Maine Secure Composites, a business spin-off of the University of
Maine’s Advanced Engineered
Wood Composites (AEWC)
Center, was subjected to full scale
testing last month and fully met
or exceeded ISO requirements.
The prototype unit had two different sidewall configurations –
one heavier than the other – to
determine optimum strength/
weight combinations. It is estimated that the final design will
have a tare weight 15-20% less
than that of a standard steel container, while TCO should also be
lower.
Security aspects aside, considerable effort has been devoted to
developing a container design
How can Rental4000 help Container
Leasing Organisations?
that is durable, easy to manufacture and repair and will not require a price premium, in order
to make it attractive commercially.
According to Professor Habib
Dagher, who is heading up the
project, it will be possible to
manufacture the CATM container
on existing container production
lines.The composite panels of the
CATM container are corrugated
in much the same way as a standard steel container and outwardly
it resembles a standard steel box.
At least two major container operators are reported to have expressed interest in the design.
Servers in boxes
Two US companies are now offering data centres housed inside
shipping containers as alternatives
to traditional buildings.
Demand for data centres and
server farms has spiked after Hurricane Katrina and new regulations requiring many companies
and government agencies to keep
more detailed and secure records
in the wake of large accounting
scandals.
Last year Sun Microsystems
unveiled its “Project Blackbox,” a
mobile data centre housed in a
20ft container that it plans to begin producing this summer, while
last month another company,
Rackable Systems Inc, announced
the first sale of its containerised
solution, called Concentro, to a
leading Internet company.
Concentro is housed in a 40ft
container and can hold up to
1,200 DC powered servers.
Rackable Systems and Sun consider there is a growing market for
containerised server banks as
building traditional “bricks and
Rackable Systems has sold its first
Concentro data centre, housed in a 40ft
container, to a leading Internet company
mortar” facilities is costly, slow and
inflexible.
Containerised solutions allow
companies to add capacity as
needed and quickly deploy infrastructure to regions with comparatively low labour and energy
costs and move them around as
those markets change.
Container makers hit
by excess capacity
Ask the people using it
Waterfront Container Leasing Co., Inc., a leading marine transportation leasing services company headquartered
in San Francisco, has recently purchased the Rental4000 solution from Real Asset Management (RAM) to manage
its fleet. Waterfront, established in June 1983, buys, sells, owns, manages and leases marine dry cargo containers,
refrigerated containers, open tops, flatracks and chassis to ocean carriers worldwide. In addition to the USA, it also
has representation in Europe, South America, Australia, Taiwan, Vietnam, The Philippines, South Korea, Hong
Kong and China.
‘
Enquiries amongst known industry users revealed a high level
of satisfaction with the Series4000 software. Subsequent
discussions with the RAM management team confirmed the
similarities between Rental4000's functionality and
Waterfront's requirements. The fact that it has been
specifically designed for the container industry deemed it
superior to other offerings which would have required a
significant amount of customisation.
’
Alan Wong, Waterfront's VP of Operations
To find out more visit:
www.realassetmgt.co.uk
Real Asset Management Plc Central Court Knoll Rise Orpington Kent BR6 0JA
Telephone: +44 (0)1689 892111 Fax: +44 (0)1689 898434 Email: solution@realassetmgt.co.uk
20
China International Marine
Containers (CIMC), the world’s
largest container manufacturer,
has reported a 1% increase in
profit in 2006 to Yuan2.83B
(US$363M) on sales of
Yuan33.2B, up 7.3%, as excess
supply hit prices and profit margins.
But Singamas Container
Holdings, the second largest
container maker, posted a worsethan-expected 60% drop in 2006
profit to US$18.1M, although
its revenues rose 9.6% to
US$924M.
Singamas chief executive Teo
Siong Seng said the bottom line
was badly dented by substantial
start-up losses from the delay in
securing full operating licences
for three new factor ies in
Ningbo,Tianjin and Huizhou in
China, which missed the peak
production season.
CIMC built 1,564,100 TEU
in 2006, up 20%, and sold
1,568,900 TEU, up 15.2%. The
company said global orders for
containers totalled 3M TEU last
year, up 20%, but annual production capacity of dry freight containers increased to 5.8M TEU,
while the supply of steel and
wooden floors remained tight.
The fluctuation in international oil prices also caused paint
prices to rise significantly, resulting in a large decline in gross
profit margins for the industry,
CIMC said.
Singamas produced 583,543
TEU in 2006, up 18%, and sold
569,823 TEU, up 1.7%. Container sales netted US$890.4M,
up 10%, but the container division’s pre-tax profit fell 80% to
US$10M.
The three new factories have
boosted Singamas’s annual production capacity at 11 facilities
to 1.25M TEU from 850,000
TEU in 2006.
To pave the way for future
growth, Singamas has implemented a three-pronged development strategy. In March 2006,
it sold a 20% stake in subsidiary
Ningbo Pacific to China Shipping Investment Co to allow the
two companies to tap the fastg rowing Ningbo/Zhejiang
market.
In May, it acquired an additional 40% stake in Qingdao Pacific, making it a 95%-owned
subsidiary.
And in September, it sold a
20% stake in subsidiary Huizhou
Pacific to China Shipping and
9% to Japan’s Mitsubishi group.
It also signed an agreement with
Mitsubishi to cooperate in the
sales and marketing of Singamas
containers in Japan.
Singamas also started producing higher value 45ft, 48ft and 53ft
containers and chassis at its
Qingdao factory for the US market, and has this year started building tank containers at a new plant
in Guangdong (see page 19).
April 2007
WorldCargo
news
CONTAINER INDUSTRY NEWS
CIMC secures bulker
roof hatch licence
China International Marine Containers
(CIMC) has signed a technology
transfer and technical assistance contract
with Unfor mtechnik Stade GmbH
(UTS), which allows it to manufacture
UTS bulk container roof hatch panel
designs at Nantong CIMC-Special Transportation Equipment Manufacture Co
Ltd in Nantong.
UTS is a European leader in the
manufacture of bulker roof hatch panels
and other types of specialised panels for
containers and owns advanced and proprietary technical know-how related to
their design and manufacture.
The German company has granted
CIMC Nantong an exclusive, non-transferable licence to use its know-how to
manufacture and sell bulk roof hatch panels worldwide except in certain areas and
to certain customers. All major
equipment, dies, jigs and fixtures for producing the panels have been supplied by
UTS and CIMC Nantong technicians
have undergone a training programme at
UTS’s German factory.
Trial production was launched under
UTS supervision in January this year and
the first commercial production of 300
roof panels started this month for Jindo
Guangzhou. Another 300 pieces will be
delivered from CIMC Nantong next
month and it is anticipated that a further
4,000 panels will be produced this year.
CIMC Nantong, which has the capacity to build 45,000 TEU/year of various special container designs, started to
build 30ft bulk containers in 2001
through Container Leasing UK for Van
Den Bosch and other customer including Bertschi AG. The company has also
developed a 20ft bulk container design
for China Railways in 2002 and to date
has built 3,000 units.
Production of roof hatch panels onsite, says CIMC, will make the company
more competitive in the bulk container
market, particularly in view of the shorter
lead time for the delivery of panels,
which were previously imported from
Germany.
A prototype 30ft bulk container with
six roof hatches built by CIMC Nantong
via Container Leasing UK for Karl
Schmidt Spedition will be exhibited at
the Transport & Logistics Exhibition in
Munich in June.
Production of bulker roof hatch panels has
already started at CIMC Nantong
New equity for SCF
Private equity manager Archer Capital has
taken a major stake in Adelaide-based specialist container leasing company SCF
Containers.The new partnership will facilitate the further expansion of SCF
Containers International as one of Australia’s leading container leasing companies, the company said.
SCF director Lindsay Carthew said
the company had experienced rapid
growth over the past 15 years “based on
our ability to respond to our customers’
need for flexible and innovative container
solutions.
“In order to maintain that growth and
‘go the next step’, the directors knew that
they had to partner with an equity investor,” he said.
“The domestic freight market in Australia is growing rapidly and is estimated
to double over the next decade.This will
create increased demand in the container
leasing market, both domestically and internationally,” Carthew added. “This
growth will be compounded by the continuing need for specialised container
types for individual customers.”
Last year, SCF added 2,100 new containers to its fleet and expects to exceed
that build in 2007, with a full-range of
20ft and 40ft sidedoor, 20ft bulk and 40ft
and 48ft palletwide containers.
Cosco Pacific
profit dips
Cosco Pacific saw its 2006 profit fall 13%
because of expenses related to the share
reform of box builder China International
Marine Containers (CIMC) and high
start-up costs at newly acquired container
terminals in China.
Profit fell to US$291.1M from
US$334.9M in 2005 and revenues
dropped 14% to US$253M following the
sale of 600,082 TEU from subsidiary
Florens Container Corporation’s leasing
fleet to Buss Capital in June and the
US$55.18M cost of CIMC’s share reform.
The box sale generated a profit of
US$50M and a finder fee of US$15M for
the Hong Kong-based company.
Florens increased its container fleet, including managed boxes, by 20% last year
to more than 1.25M TEU, with utilisation reaching 96.2%, up from 95.5% in
2005 and well above the industry average
of 91.8%.
Of the total, 456,877 TEU were leased
to affiliate Cosco Container Line, up from
377,324 TEU in 2005, and 163,851 TEU
to third parties, down from 630,925 TEU
in 2005 following sale of the boxes, which
it now manages.
Cosco Pacific’s terminals in China,
Singapore and Belgium handled 32.7M
TEU in 2006, up 25.7% and contributing US$90.5M of the profit. Cosco-HIT,
its joint venture with Hongkong International Terminals, saw throughput fall
8.3% to 1.7M TEU, while its profit contribution fell 15.1% to US$23.75M.
The reshuffle of Asia-Europe services
from Shanghai’s Waigaoqiao port to
Yangshan also dragged profit down, said
vice-chairman Xu Minjie.
Its Antwerp terminal, which opened
last year, remained in the red, but is expected to make a profit next year, when
Phase II of Nansha terminal in south
China will also start contributing.
April 2007
21
WorldCargo
news
SHIPPING NEWS
Record ship crane
orders for Cargotec
Cargotec’s MacGregor business
unit received a record number
of ship crane orders in the first
quarter of 2007 from various
shipyards in China, Korea, Poland, Romania and Croatia.
The cranes, valued at €63M,
will be delivered during 20072010 and are for bulkers, general cargo ships, containerships
and tankers (hose-handling
cranes).
The list includes an order
from Emirates Trading Agency
in Dubai for four heavy duty
grab cranes on board each of
two Panamax transloading stations, primarily for the handling
of iron ore. The complete installation will be capable of handling ore at the rate of 2500 tph.
MacGregor also recently
won a €13M order from Aker
Yards in Germany for hatch
covers for the four super ice
class, 14,500 dwt container ships
under construction for Russia’s
Norilsk Nickel. The first ship,
NORILSKIY NICKEL, was successfully
delived by Aker Finnyards in Helsinki last year.
As previously reported in
WorldCargo News, the ships exploit the double-acting icebreaking principle, in conjunction with electric pod propulsion,
to transport nickel exports from
Northern Siberia without assistance from icebreakers. Container
capacity of 648 TEU is arranged
in three holds (389 TEU) and on
deck (259 TEU).
In another development,
MacGregor and Vietnam Shipbuilding Industr y Group
(Vinashin) have established a
49:51 joint venture, MacGregor
Vinashin Marine Equipment Ltd.
The new company will initially focus on hatch cover production for shipyards within Vietnam, to be followed by produc-
tion and assembly of marine
cranes and ro-ro access equipment.
In line with Cargotec’s overall expansion plans, MacGregor
has made an agremeent (subject
to regulatory approvals) to buy
90% of Norway-based Hydramarine AS, which specialises in
“high-end” cranes, davits,
winches and subsea load handling equipment for offshore
supply vessels and rigs, including a popular line of large, active heave-compensated cranes.
Hydramarine has an assembly
plant in Kristiansand but has
outsourced the manufacturing
of components.
An ag reement was also
signed recently to acquire 90%
of Singapore-based Plimsoll
Corporation Pte Ltd, a leading
supplier of deck machinery for
the offshore oil and gas and
marine industries in the Asia
Pacific region.
Plimsoll has assembly plants
in Singapore and Indonesia but
has outsourced the manufacturing of components. A new assembly plant is under construction in China.
New heavy lift operator
Mediterranean Project Chartering
Srl (MPC) is the name of a new
joint venture for shipments of
project cargo and heavy lift contracts formed by Germany-based
BBC Chartering and Logistic and
Genoa-based ship agency
Intermare.
The new company is run by
Matteo Fortuna and Mauro
Morasso from Intermare together
with BBC’s CEO Svend Andersen.
It will manage and develop BBC’s
business in the Mediterranean as
well as some projects for Italian customers outside the Mediterranean.
BBC operates a fleet of around
100 ships worldwide and is undertaking a major expansion programme. It will take delivery of
around 40 geared vessels of 400012,000 dwt in 2008 and 2009,
each equipped with two 400t
cranes able to make tandem lifts
up to 800t.
BBC has formed similar joint
ventures with strong local players
in South East Asia and the Middle East, respectively Asia Project
Chartering in Singapore and Arab
The new joint venture will market BBC’s services in the Mediterranean and to
some Italian customers outside the Mediterranean area
Project Chartering in Dubai.
● Last month BBC INDIA arrived in
the Port of Longview (Wa) from
Esbjerg with turbine components
for the Klondike III Wind Farm
owned by PPM Energy in
Sherman County, Oregon, as part
of a dedicated contract between
the port and Siemens that also includes tower and turbine components for the White Creek Wind
Project in Washington.
Profit jump for Stena
Stena Line, Europe’s biggest ferry
operator, doubled its profit last
year compared to 2005 to
SEK450M (€49.5M), its best performance since the mid-1990s,
reflecting stable growth on the
passenger side, continued strong
development for freight and the
ongoing effects of cost-cutting
activities.
“The strength of our business
is the combination of passenger
and freight business,” said CEO
Gunnar Blomdahl. “We take this
into account when rebuilding
vessels and investing in new ones.”
He mentioned the lengthening of
STENA BRITANNICA and STENA
HOLLANDICA and the two 62,000
gt superferries costing SEK4B
being built by Aker Yards in Germany (see WorldCargo News December 2006, p18).
Other examples are STENA
TRADER, which has operated on
the Hoek van HollandKillingholme route since last autumn, and its sister ship STENA
TRAVELLER, which will be introduced on the route this June.
NZ tightens entry
Import entries for containers arriving in New Zealand will have
to contain details of the approved
transitional facility (ATF) they are
bound for under new biosecurity
recommendations from the
country’s Office of the Auditor
General.
The auditor general’s report
on managing container bio-security risks recommended that the
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) “enforce the requirements of the Import Health
Standard for Sea Containers from
All Countries for importers to
provide information on the destination of a container once it
leaves the wharf,” New Zealand
Customs Service has advised.
“This declaration will be
made via NZ Customs Service
import entries through the use of
the ATF abbreviation in the
Other Information data fields,”
Customs said. “MAF will be asking NZ Customs Service to reject all import entries where a
valid ATF code is not submitted.”
From April 1, any container
covered by an import entry that
does not include the destination
transitional facility information
will be stopped at the port of arrival, Customs said.The importer
will be required to resubmit the
import entry declaring the destination transitional facility.
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April 2007
Section 7
8/5/07
6:47 pm
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WorldCargo
news
SPAIN: PORT DEVELOPMENT
Run to keep up with the pace setters
Spain’s commercial seaports reported sustained growth in 2006 with overall trade
rising at an average rate of 4.7%. Around
460 mt of goods were moved last year
across Spain’s 46 ports with container traffic increasing 8.9% to more than 12.1M
TEU, according to the national ports
agency Puertos del Estado. General cargo
traffic increased 10% to 184.3 mt.
The Mediterranean ports of Barcelona, Valencia and Algeciras are among
Europe’s top 10 container ports in terms
of containers moved and account for two
thirds of all Spanish container traffic and
close to half of all traffic.
Throughput at Algeciras rose 2.1% to
3.2M TEU, nearly all transhipment. The
growth rate slowed both because the port
is nearly reaching full capacity and because of logistical changes arising from
Maersk’s absorption of P&ONL. These
factors enabled the nearby Port of Málaga
to consolidate its position as a transhipment port for Maersk.
Container traffic at Valencia and Barcelona increased respectively 8.4% to
2.6M TEU and by 11.9% to 2.3M TEU.
Barcelona remains Spain’s wealthiest port,
due to the relatively high value of imp/
ex moves and its low dependence on transhipment. Container throughput at Las
Palmas, Canary Islands increased by over
10% to 1.4M TEU.
Container traffic has continued to grow at
a fast rate in Spanish ports, prompting
sustained investment programmes
the 5100 TEU MSC ELENI followed by the
5600 TEU MSC MARTA.
The port authority (PABi) invested
€33M, including the completion of a new
border inspection post. The new facility
is much bigger than the one it replaces
and has 16 inspection docks.
This March PABi awarded Binaria 21
SA the concession to manage and operate a 111,500 m2 plot of developed land
for cargo handling and multi-modal distribution. The investment requirement is
€20.8M. Due to growing demand for
space near the docks to carry out different logistics operations, PABi is also developing a new storage and distribution
facility on new land reclaimed from the
sea in Santurtzi and Zierbena. The first
part of this zone was to Zierbena Bizkaia
2002 AIE several years ago.
In container traffic terms Bilbao is
essentially a short sea/feeder port and
PABi is taking part in a project to analyse
the viability of setting up a short sea shipping service based on 45ft containers, allowing shipping to compete directly with
road trailer distribution in terms of
europallet and load cube capacity.
The service would cover the Atlantic
arc from Lisbon to Rotterdam, passing
through Bilbao and another port in
France. The study is slated for compleDragados-SPL’s TdS Málaga terminal is now
firmly established as Maersk’s second
transhipment centre in Spain
North star
Bilbao’s container traffic increased 4% last
year to 523,114 TEU (or 5.6 mt), with
UK and Spanish cabotage o/d traffic being the main segments. In November and
December MSC made calls with the biggest vessels ever to be handled in the port,
Major equipment
purchase orders
Paceco España SA and Konecranes have
reported major new orders from Spanish
container terminal operators, for quayside cranes and RTGs respectively.
In total, Paceco España has reported
orders for a total of 11 Paceco Portainers.
In addition to the €9.5M order for two
post-Panamax units recently placed by
Contenemar for its terminals in Las
Palmas and Valencia (WorldCargo News,
February 2007, p6), Dragados-SPL group
has ordered five cranes for terminals in
Las Palmas,Valencia (MarítimaValenciana),
Málaga (Terminales del Sureste) and the
Portuguese Port of Setúbal.
Finally, four cranes, with a monobox
boom, have been ordered by Boluda
Corporacion Marítima (Boluda Shipping), part of Naveira Pinillos, for its terminals in Alicante (Terminales Maritímas
del Sureste) and Las Palmas (La Luz).
Boluda recently acquired a majority stake
in the La Luz terminal from Acciona and
is concentrating its Canaries’ traffic there
instead of moving some of it through the
Opcsa terminal.
Paceco España may also be in the running for a new container crane that MotaEngil, which now owns Tertir, has said it
will acquire for its Sadoport multi-purpose terminal operation in Setúbal.
Konecranes has booked new orders for
RTGs worth around €15M from existing customer Dragados SPL and new customer Boluda Shipping. Dragados has
placed an order for six more RTGs for
Marítima Valenciana. Dragados received
its first Konecranes RTGs in 2005 and
has since then made five repeat orders.
Boluda has ordered eight RTGs - five
for Terminales Maritímas del Sureste,
Alicante and three for La Luz.
“Konecranes is now the leading supplier
of RTGs to Spain and we look forward
to a successful partnership with Grupo
Boluda,” says Aku Lehtinen, Konecranes’
director, RTGs.
Finally, Konecranes has booked two
RTGs from Capsa, Tenerife. Capsa, a
Grup TCB affiliate, is a new customer,
although another affiliate, TCV Valencia, is an existing customer. All the
RTGs are slated for delivery next January. They are of the 8-wheel type, have
an SWL of 50t and stack 6 + 1 and 1
over 5 x 9ft in high.cranes. ❏
April 2007
23
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WorldCargo
news
tion this June. Last December the
European Commission abandoned its previous efforts to outlaw use of 45ft containers, and EU
member-states can therefore continue to authorise their use.
There is also a project to develop a new ro-ro service between
France and Spain within the ambit of the EU’s Marco Polo programme (“motorways of the sea.”)
Tenders are due out very shortly
and several Atlantic Arc ports in
both countries are expected to
take part in the bidding.
Bilbao remains a significant
port for non-containerised general cargo. Last year throughput
SPAIN: PORT DEVELOPMENT
increased 18% to 3.8 mt, and this
figure does not include steel products traffic, which increased 17%
to 3.9 mt, or 25% of all dry cargo
moved through the port last year.
Finally, PABi has a new managing director, with José Pico
Hor meño replacing Jesús
Villanueva Fraile on the latter’s
retirement last September.
TCB secures finance
Barcelona’s leading container operator Terminal de Contenidors de
Barcelona (Grup TCB) has secured a €118.5M loan to finance
the expansion of its terminal up
until 2028. Spanish and French
banks Banesto Banco Sabadell,
BNP Paribas and Société Générale
gave the green light to the finance
loan in late February. In the same
month the Barcelona Port Authority (APB) agreed in February
to extend TCB’s container terminal concession by five years until
2028, to enable TCB to amortise
its new financial commitments.
The investment will go on
new container handling equipment and the creation of new
space that will almost double
TCB’s capacity from 1.4M TEU
to 2.3M TEU. Already last December TCB signed a contract
worth €27M with ZPMC for
Tenerife: Darsena Este and (below)
schematic of the ambitious Granadilla
port project
three superpost-Panamax cranes
able to work 22-wide ships up to
12,000 TEU. They are scheduled
to be delivered this year and be
operational by year end.
In the meantime TCB’s existing terminal on Muelle Sur will
be connected to newly-designated
areas bringing the company’s total container handling space to 86
hectares.A re-organisation of port
space was approved by APB last
October to create more room for
container storage.
Equal footing
The enlargement and extension of
its concession puts TCB on an
equal footing with the HutchisonGrupo Mestre consortium that
will operate the future Prat Wharf
container terminal. The agreements follow TCB’s unsuccessful
bid for the Prat Wharf concession.
Under the revised TCB concession, both terminals will operate under the same terms and conditions. “This will provide Barcelona with two large container terminals that will compete between
themselves for traffic on equal
terms,” said APB.
TCB’s managing director
Miguel Duro said that the enlargement of the company’s facilities
means that the issue of Barcelona’s shortage of space for storing
and managing containers would
be resolved. It will also provide
TCB with 1924m of berthing,
compared to 1380m today.
Duro added that the
intermodal rail (un)loading tracks
serving the facility should be increased from 450m to 750m. Last
year TCB opened its own rail
service,TCB Rail, to the outskirts
of Madrid.“We are looking to operate further rail services in the
future,” he said, including services
to Zaragoza and France.
In 2009, TCB will be connected to new European gauge
rail tracks to the French border,
obviating the need to transload
containers between wagons.
Prat repairs
Meanwhile, repairs to 500m of
quay wall at the Prat wharf development are likely to continue into
this summer. Work to fix the displaced concrete blocks will not
start until an APB geotechnical investigation reports its findings, and
that is expected this month.
As previously reported, the in-
cident, which occurred on January Ist this year, raised serious concerns that the opening of the
terminal may be delayed by at
least six months. It is now
thought that sand used to fill in
space for the foundation of the
terminal may have provoked the
displacement of the concrete
blocks 120m out to sea.
Hutchison and Grupo Mestre,
the operator of the port’s second
biggest container terminal,Terminal de Catalunya (Tercat) won a
30 year concession to operate the
new container terminal last year
and it was expected to become
operational in 2008.
However Mestre has admitted
that the new terminal is unlikely
to be operational until at least
January 1st 2009. Hutchison and
Mestre have already postponed an
order for eight, 22-wide
gooseneck quayside cranes (a
gooseneck profile is required because of proximity to Barcelona’s
international airport).
Meanwhile, APB has shifted
construction work to the southern side of the Prat Wharf terminal, behind the 900m of quay line
that remained in place. This was
initially to be the second phase of
the terminal, but the intention
now is to reverse the construction
phases in order to minimise delays. On completion, the terminal
will occupy 93 hectares and have
1500m of quay line with a draught
of up to 16.5m alongside. It will
be able to handle 2.5M TEU/year.
Marval invests
Ahead of a €53M enlargement
plan, Dragados-SPL’s Marítima
Valenciana (Marval) flagship terminal in Valencia is investing
€30M in new container handling
equipment. Marval has already
placed orders worth €22M for two
superpost-Panamax Portainers
from Paceco España, eight RTGs
from Konecranes and new tractor
heads. In the light of further
growth forecasts, Marval said last
month that it would invest a further €8M in six more RTGs and
extra tractors. (These orders have
now been confirmed - see p19).
Marval posted throughput of
1.88M TEU last year, up 10.6%
on 2005. Overall, 1.283M containers passed through the terminal, 98,934 more than the previous year. Growth was partly due
to the arrival of five new services,
which boosted the overall number
of calls by 2% to 1557.
24
The average exchange per call
grew from 794 to 827 moves,
while the average monthly
number of road vehicles accessing the terminal grew to 50,283.
The new rail service to Madrid
boosted rail intermodal distribution by 9.94% to 54,758 TEU.
The surge of traffic comes despite operational delays provoked
by the installation of a new information technology system, Catos,
at the terminal last year and a road
haulier labour conflict.
Further expansion
Marval has submitted further plans
to the port authority (APV), reasoning that the opening of Mediterranean Shipping Company’s
dedicated terminal last autumn has
not affected its own growth prospects. MSC is the port’s leading
single client and operations at its
new terminal are expected to
come into full operation this June.
Last year local industry raised
concerns that MSC would move
all its shipments to its own terminal. MSC has been holding talks
with dockers and road hauliers in
a bid to implement new labour
management schemes to increase
productivity.
In January MSC stated that
subject to agreements being
reached it planned to increase
shipments through Valencia by
about 30% this year. MSC increased its traffic over the port
by 6% last year to around 1.4M
TEU, but this was 100,000 TEU
less than forecast, as up to 70
ship calls were switched to Barcelona and other Mediterranean
ports due to labour conflicts
involving road hauliers, terminal operators and APV.
Bidding again
A P Møller-Maersk has not ruled
out making a bid for a concession
to run a vast new container terminal at Algeciras - Spain’s and the
Mediterranean Sea’s leading container transhipment port.
However, ahead of the opening of A P Møller-Maersk’s new
Tangiers-Med container facility in
Morocco, Algeciras Port Authority (APBA) is drawing up conditions for the concession that will
enable other leading players to
obtain a “foot in the door,” as it is
concerned about Maersk’s monopoly on transhipment container
trade in the port. Maersk recently
told a Spanish transport journal
that it is not “optimistic” about any
April 2007
Section 7
8/5/07
6:52 pm
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WorldCargo
news
SPAIN: PORT DEVELOPMENT
bid for the new facility. All the same,
APBA itself has said that Maersk will need
more capacity.
Massive spend
APBA is investing €400M in the new terminal that is part of the port’s 100 hectare Isla Verde land expansion project.
Despite competition from Tangiers-Med
and the growth of transhipment trade at
the nearby port of Málaga, APBA says
market studies show there will be further
demand for container cargoes in the
Mediterranean Sea.
APBA says it will open a tender for
the deep water facility by July. Bidders
will fight for a 35 year concession to operate the terminal that will have 1.5M
TEU capacity by mid-2009. The operator of the winning bid will have first refusal on a second terminal area of 1.5M
TEU/year facility.
In a bid to reduce dependence on
transhipment and earn more revenue,
APBA has said it will favour bids that
promise to take steps to generate imp/ex
traffics and use rail transport, to access a
bigger hinterland.The new terminals will
be linked directly to the rail line to Madrid and have on-dock IY facilities.
The expansion project is financed by
APBA, EU cohesion funds and a maximum loan of E180M from the European
Investment Bank. A massive, 34m high/
deep breakwater is already under construction.The stakes are also very high as
a concession for a second container terminal at Tangiers was awarded to a consortium including Eurogate-Contship,
MSC, and CMA CGM.
Last year Maersk España, A P MøllerMaersk’s Spanish subsidiary, invested
€48M in new cranes and container handling equipment for Algeciras. It purchased five superpost-Panamax cranes at
a cost of E28M, three from Impsa and
two from ZPMC, and these were installed
earlier this year.
The investments are aimed at catering for Maersk’s latest 12,000 TEU
Emma-class ships. With the new equipment in place and operational, the company hopes to increase annual capacity at
Algeciras to around 4.1M TEU, so once
APBA’s new container facility is operational, capacity at Algeciras will exceed
6M TEU.
TCA is also being expanded to accommodate future demand. Muelle 11 is
being extended up to where it meets
Muelle 9. Backfilling of this area will produce 200m of additional quay and a further 45,600 m2 of overall working area.
Alongside draught is being deepened from
10m to 12m through a programme of
dredging and quay reinforcement.
Reading palms
Boluda has also invested close to €20M
in container handling equipment at Las
Palmas, after the company purchased from
Spanish construction giant Acciona a majority stake in the La Luz container terminal in January this year. Boluda ordered
two superpost-Panamax Portainers from
Paceco España as well as five RTGs from
Konecranes, and four terminal tractors
and two reach stackers from Kalmar.
The enlargement area of the container
terminal is due to be opened at the end
of this month and will provide 385m of
berth line with a draught alongside of
14.5m. Boluda expects to more than double handling capacity to 300.000 TEU.
“Most traffic will be to and from the
mainland, but trade with West Africa is
playing an increasingly strong role,” said
Frank Naranjo, general manager of the
terminal. “The Boluda Group will move
around 150,000 TEU at La Luz with its
own ships once the cranes are delivered
Port of Tarragona container terminal operator
Contarsa recently received its first call by an
MSC vessel. MSC SELMA, deployed in the line’s
western Mediterranean/North Africa service,
exchanged 400 containers
Huge jump
Container traffic handled by DragadosSPL’s Terminales del Sureste Málaga (TdS
Málaga) increased a massive 82% to
450,694 TEU, achieved on just 360m of
active berthing line equipped with four
superpost-Panamax Portainers from
Paceco España. As noted, the terminal is
used almost exclusively by Maersk, for
transhipment of Far East/Middle East
containers to destinations in West Africa.
This year the entire 400,000 m2 area
of the terminal will become available, including a 40m berth extension in the first
part of the year and a further 320m in
the last quarter, bringing the quay length
to 720m.This will boost annual throughput to between 600,000 TEU and
675,000 TEU. Maersk signed an agreement to bring traffic to the port at least
until 2010 and, a fifth Portainer is on order from Paceco España. As well as containers, the terminal handled 15,463 new
vehicles in 2006 and traffic is expected to
reach 30,000 new vehicles this year.
More in Alicante
Terminales Marítimas del Sureste (TMS),
owned by Boluda Shipping Group
(Naviera Pinillos) and Spanish construction company OHL, will operate the new
container terminal in the Port of Alicante
Darsena Oeste expansion area.
TMS has ordered front line equipment
worth E11M for this operation, two 55t
SWL Portainers from Paceco España and
three RTGs from Konecranes. Other purchases included three reach stackers, eight
terminal tractor/trailer sets, one mobile
harbour crane and an ECH mast truck.
Operations are due to commence in the
middle of this year.
Last year Alicante’s existing container
ter minal, operated by Ter minal de
Contenedores de Alicante (TCA), nowadays co-owned by Contenemar and
Consignataria Herrera (together they acquired Marval’s 33% stake) handled almost 152,000 TEU, 10% up on 2005.
April 2007
25
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WorldCargo
news
SPAIN: PORT DEVELOPMENT
next February.” Boluda’s purchase
of the La Luz terminal will raise
competition between it and its rival at Las Palmas, the Opcsa terminal. Naranjo confirmed that
Boluda would switch all calls from
Opcsa to La Luz when the new
equipment is up and running.
Tenerife projects
Elsewhere in the Canaries, TCB
Group company Capsa handled
276,000 TEU (+5.1%) last year at
its Tenerife terminal, which is split
into two parts, Bufadero quay and
Dique del Este.
Next January a further 50,000
m2 will be added to the latter area
that currently occupies 66,000 m2,
to be followed by an extension of
its quay line from 435m to 698m,
to provide a combined quay
length of 1238m and a contiguous area of 21.6 hectares.
This has been made possible
by the port authority’s decision to
buy out the Interburgo España dry
dock ship repair yard on Darsena
del Este that separated the two
parts of Capsa’s operation.
New investments by Capsa this
year are understood to include
two Konecranes’ quayside gantry
cranes, along with two reach
stackers to ease landside congestion, which has resulted in sporadic “boycotts” by road hauliers.
To overcome the problems,
Capsa is implementing a booking
programme that will allow it to
know 24 hours in advance when
a haulier plans to retrieve or deliver a particular container.
The terminal’s physical constraints have confined it to mainland cabotage and other short sea
services (mainly Naviera Pinillos,
Contenemar and Transatlántica) ,
but Capsa is also eyeing the
Granadilla development aimed at
deep sea transhipment traffic announced by Puertos de Tenerife.
The port authority recently
awarded a €114M contract to
build the outer retaining dyke for
the new port to a joint venture
composed of FCC, Sato and
Promotora Punta Larga.The work
is slated for within 37 months.
The project is unusual in that
the EU agreed to override its
negative environmental impacts
on the ground that local economic development was more
pressing.The proposed terminal
would occupy 260,000 m 2 and
have 650m of quay with a
draught alongside of 16m. ❏
Galicia goes into overdrive
The ports of Galicia are not traditionally associated with container traffic and have tended to
occupy themselves with niche
roles. A number of new projects
have been unveiled, but they do
not all appear to be demand-led.
One port that has been experiencing capacity shortfalls isVigo.
The container terminal operator
Termavi, the Contenemar/Davila
Group joint venture, has already
expanded into all areas on Muelle
Guixar in an attempt to keep up
with demand and is fast running
out of storage space. Throughput
last year rose another 12% to
192,000 TEU, placing increasing
strain on available resources.
The ports in Spain’s north western
corner have ambitious ongoing
development plans
More available
cently awarded a further 12,000
m 2 by APV. Combined, the new
areas will allow the operator to
handle up to another 40,000
TEU/year.
At the same time, a plan has
been implemented to reduce the
time that empty containers remain
within the terminal, clogging up
where there will be 200m of quay
and alongside water depth of 13m.
This will be operated by
Contenemar subsidiary Terminales
de Contenedores de Vilagarcía
(Tercovi) and cost €6M, part of
which will be spent on acquiring
two cranes. Although only two
services will initially move to
Vilagarcía, Contenemar is apparently looking at developing a third.
This should result in throughput
of around 20,000 TEU during the
first year of operation.
New customer
Peugeot Citroën says it needs the whole of Vigo’s Bouzas expansion area for
new cars, including the parts earmarked for a new container terminal
However,Adif, the national rail infrastructure body, has reached an
agreement with the port authority (APV) to free up 20,000 m2 at
its own ter minal for use by
Termavi, whose own concession
area will thereby grow to 152,000
m2. In addition, Termavi was re-
precious ground slots. For January alone, the policy of removing
empties as fast as possible reduced
their numbers by 38.5%, and APV
president Abel Caballero remarked
that the initiative had been “extraordinarily effective.”
Time for Bouzas
These short term measures
provide stopgap capacity until the
planned second container terminal on Muelle de Bouzas enters
service.The go ahead was received
in January last year and will result
in a new 300,000 m2 facility capable of handling 450,000 TEU/
year. Around 70,000 m2 of the total area will be reclaimed land, allowing the terminal to accommodate vessels drawing up to 20m of
water, while the remaining
230,000 m2 is currently used for
parking new vehicles.As such, says
Caballero, it is poorly-utilised.
Thank you for...
2000
Dilemma
The cost of the project, due for
completion in 2009, has been put
at €70M Once both container terminals are fully operational, Vigo
will be able to handle around
630,000 TEU/year. However, following the publication of the
port’s expansion plans, Caballero
was almost immediately presented
with an interesting dilemma. As
previously reported (WorldCargo
News, Februar y 2007, p12),
Peugeot Citroën group, the port’s
biggest customer, claims that it will
need the whole of Muelle Bouzas
to absorb increased output from
its local car plant.
Meanwhile Contenemar is to
transfer its Canaries’ and Morocco
service calls from Termavi (which,
as noted, it co-owns) to the nearby
Port of Vilagarcía, in order to free
up more space to accommodate a
higher level of container throughput from key client Maersk.
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Having returned to Vigo some 12
months ago, Maersk is seeking to
consolidate traffic flows there on
services between Africa and North
Europe and had apparently threatened to pull out of Vigo all together unless some moves were
made to accede to its wishes.
The Vilagarcía port authority
has made 50,000 m2 available for
the construction of a container
ter minal on Muelle Ferrazo,
Elsewhere in the region, the small
Port of Marín, which inaugurated
a 48,500 m2 container terminal in
2005, operated by Pérez Torres, has
finally attracted a new shipping
line customer. Chilean operator
CCNI is to transfer its fortnightly
service linking WCSA, Central
America/Caribbean and North
Europe from Vigo to Marín. The
switch was prompted by the lack
of congestion at the new port of
call, as well as the added prospects
that Marín provides for non-container ised general cargo and
project cargo.
Marín handled 35,424 TEU
last year, which represented
growth of 16.2%, while forecasts
for the present year are for a further increase of 12%-14%. The
terminal has 250m of quay, with
alongside water depth of 12m.
Equipment consists of two refurbished Panamax cranes and four
reach stackers.
Further north, at La Coruña,
the 10,000 m2 Terminal Rías Altas,
which belongs to Terminales
Marítimos de Galicia, is to expand
its operating area by 20,000 m2
in line with traffic build-up, despite the fact that it handled only
1355 TEU last year.
However, in September 2006,
OPDR Hamburg commenced
calls on its weekly North Europe
service, resulting in throughput
forecasts for the present year of
between 8000 TEU and 10,000
TEU. The terminal has 407m of
quay and draught of 13m. Equipment consists of a mobile harbour
crane, two reach stackers and a
fleet of 15 FLTs.
Ferrol plans
At nearby El Ferrol, Pérez Torres
has acquired a 100% stake in Terminal Polivalente de Ferrol (TPF),
which is to build the port’s new
container handling facility. TPF
was originally a joint venture of
Pérez Torres and giant construction group Acciona, but Pérez
Torres acquired its partner’s 51%
when Acciona decided to pull out
of port terminal ownership.
The proposed terminal will
occupy a 230,000 m2 area in El
Ferrol’s Outer Harbour development.The new facility, which will
have a draught of 20m alongside
its 600m quay, is costing €120M,
with construction scheduled to
start later this year. Pérez Torres is
confident that it can handle traffic of 500,000 TEU/year at the
port, whose throughput last year
was a meagre 1172 TEU. ❏
Vilagarcía: a new container terminal will be built on Muelle Ferrazo (foreground)
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April 2007
Section 7
14/5/07
12:24 pm
Page 27
WorldCargo
news
PORTUGAL: PORT DEVELOPMENT
Ports consolidated by major new investor
Construction giant Mota-Engil purchased Tertir Group, the country’s
largest port terminal operator last
October and now runs an enterprise
that includes port operations in Lisbon, Leixões, Aveiro, Lisbon, Maputo
in Mozambique and road haulage
and forwarding businesses. And it coowns with ACS multi-purpose terminals in Setúbal.
Mota-Engil bought 100% of Rodrigo
Leite, which has a 67% share in Tertir, and
then the rest of Tertir’s shares at €11.37
each. The company operates motorway
concessions in Portugal and Spain and has
construction and environmental business
interests in Angola, the US and Central
Europe. In 2005 it had net profits of
€30.4M on a turnover of €1.38B.
Growth target
Throughput at the Mota-Engil terminals
was stable last year, but the company is
targeting increases of at least 5% a year
over the next two years. It says it will introduce new information systems and
carry out modernisation works and, specifically with regard to Lisbon, improve
services provided to ships and increase
hinterland connections in order to compete with Sines. Two years ago MSC
switched calls from Lisbon to PSA International’s Terminal XXI concession at
Sines, sparking major growth there.
Mota-Engil has also stated that it will
order this year a second ship-to-shore
gantry crane for Sadoport, where
throughput has increased since last August when Maersk transferred a regular
weekly feeder/short sea service from Lisbon. The service now calls at Setúbal,
Algeciras, Barcelona, Fos, Málaga,
Algeciras and returns to Setúbal.
the second phase construction by mid2008. It has been holding talks over the
purchase of more cranes, with a view to
doubling capacity to 550.000 TEU under phase 2. The berth line will be extended from 320m to 620m in length.
In effect PSA wants to accelerate
progress as, under the concession agreement with the port authority (APS), the
facility would be enlarged once it reached
the 250,000 TEU/year mark. However
growth forecasts called for a rethink, said
Jorge D’Almeida, director of PSA Sines.
As noted, throughput has shot up dramatically The third expansion phase of
the terminal is slated for completion in
2012 when Terminal XX1 should be directly linked by shuttle rail services to a
transport logistics centre in Badajoz, just
inside the Spanish border (see below).
Main driver
The 8.6% traffic increase at Sines to 27.2
mt was the main reason for a 1.9% rise in
overall growth at Portuguese ports in
2006. Sines handled no less than 43% of
the 63.4 mt of trade moved at Portugal’s
ports last year. Liquid bulk imports increased 6%. Throughput at Leixões remained stable, while Lisbon and Setúbal
both logged lower throughputs. Other
than Sines, only Aveiro managed increased
traffic, but its figure of 3.35 mt of general
cargo was just 0.6% ahead of 2005.
The government announced in February that it would invest €840M
(US$1.2B) over the next five years to
improve rail approaches and links to the
Spanish market. Some €80M has been
earmarked to connect Aveiro to the national rail network but most of the funds
(€760M) will go on a new rail corridor
to connect Sines with Badajoz by 2012.
From Badajoz a future rail route will be
connected to Madrid to provide a high
speed freight service.
The investment is part of a government “rethink” of ports policy that is ex-
pected to lead to a new ports’ law affecting port tariff rates and the collection of
VAT on non-EU goods 45 days after they
have entered Portugal. Transport Minister Ana Paula Vitorino also stated that it
no longer makes sense for domestic ports
to continue to receive any direct subsidies, prompting speculation that they will
cease this year.
Meanwhile, the government has denied reports that it has exerted influence
over port policy at Sines since 2005, even
though, for strategic reasons, it still holds
a 100% equity stake in the country’s leading “energy port.”
It is the case that the government has
not made any public comment on the
port’s investment plans since then, but
sceptics are still not convinced that APS
officials are in charge. ❏
EFFICIENT
CONTAINER
HANDLING
Lisbon preferred?
Maersk, however, has indicated that Lisbon is its first preference for the container
terminal that it says it wants to manage
and operate in Portugal, through APM
Terminals. Representatives of the shipping
line have already met senior officials of
the port authority (APL), which is aiming to open the port’s third container terminal on the South Bank of the Tagus at
Trafaria, adjacent to the Silopor grain silos, sometime in the near future.
Meanwhile,APL has awarded a €14M
contract to construction companies
Somague and SETH to reinforce and
upgrade the quay between Santa Apolónia
and Jardim do Tobaco. The work, which
is part of a multi-phase programme,
should begin this month and is scheduled to last 12 months. The new cruise
terminal here will replace the existing
cruise facility at Alcântara Dock and free
the space for use by the deep water container terminal operator, Liscont.
Brought forward
Rapid growth at Terminal XXI in Sines
has prompted PSA to go ahead with a
€40M enlargement of the terminal, which
opened in 2004. Container movements
increased 124% last year to more than
122,000 TEU and PSA wants to conclude
Ro-ro plans
The Setúbal port authority (APSS) plans
to offer for concession a new ro-ro terminal next year. The port is already attractive for car shippers and APSS believes
there are further opportunities to tap into
the Madr id market. APSS has also
launched a competition to find the best
way to organise regular block trains with
Madrid. Five entries will be judged, with
the remit to look at a variety of different
cargo flows and find the fastest and cheapest way of getting them to market. The
studies will be funded jointly by APSS
and port concessionaires.
APSS is keen to ensure that the new
multi-purpose terminal in Zone 2 will
be able to function as a gateway for Madrid. This new 200,000 m2 facility has
725m of quay with a draught of up to
15m alongside. Another study will look
at ways of improving access to the port
for Panamax ships under all tidal states. ❏
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April 2007
27
WCN_March_07.indd 1
30.3.2007 15:50:19
Section 7
14/5/07
12:28 pm
Page 28
WorldCargo
news
ITALY: PORT DEVELOPMENT/INTERMODAL
Ports to get railroaded into shape?
Trenitalia (FS Cargo) has put
the cat among the pigeons.
Managing director Mauro
Moretti said at a forum organised by the Italian association of port authorities that
his organisation wants to take
a direct stake in port operations and compete with major international players such
as Contship-Eurogate and
PSA International that enjoy
the lion’s share of the country’s container traffic.
Moretti argued that in today’s
liberalised freight environment FS
cannot afford to sit back on the
sidelines and just be a passive carrier for a part of the logistic chain,
always at somebody else’s beck and
call, but had to become more involved in the port-to-door process.This is the same reasoning that
is driving Railion’s designs on strategic port stakes and is no less controversial.
This is not because, as in
Railion’s case, it is too strong and
“monopolistic,” however. On the
contrary, the argument is that FS
is financially too weak to do a
credible job in the ports.
But Moretti says that FS is the
only national organisation with
the scale to match foreign-owned
terminal operators on an equal
footing and retain the full value
within the Italian economy. The
four ports that have been targeted
initially are hinted to be Genova,
Trieste, Táranto and Gioia Tauro.
As regards Trieste, Moretti
stated that FS wanted to become
“involved in logistics activities inside the port. Our interest lies not
in just being a transport operator,
but in managing the logistics and
organising integrated services.
Eastern Europe represents a reference point for cargo flows and
Trieste is a key node.”
Sixth deal?
Apart from that, no real details of
FS’s tactics or strategy have been
divulged, but it has been mooted
that it is talking with PSA Sinport
about co-management of VIth
Module at VTE Genova.
This development is in limbo
because of the protracted dispute
between Contship Italia and PSA
Sinport and a tie-up with FS could
give PSA Sinport the opportunity
to force the issue. It would also
give PSA Sinport a hand in
intermodal shuttle services that are
planned between Genoa and a
designated inland hub at
Alessandria, behind the mountains
and strategically located on the
Torino-Milano rail corridor.
Another joint operation could
perhaps be a new container shuttle that is being planned between
Interporto di Parma, operated by
Cepim, and the Port of La Spezia.
However, it is not clear how that
could work out as most of the
port’s container traffic here is handled by Contship Italia (LSCT).
New company
Cepim’s marketing director
Nicola Paradiso says that the new
shuttle service will be operated by
a dedicated new company involving La Spezia port interests and
Cepim and is expected to move
100,000 TEU of shipping containGrendi’s Antonio Musso says that
Genoa port authority can readily solve
the problems at the Sampierdarena
Crossrail’s Italian job
Crossrail Italia Srl, an affiliate of
Swiss-based rail freight operator
Crossrail AG (which, as previously reported in WorldCargo
News, was acquired by Babcock
& Brown last year), has obtained
an operating license and safety
certificate to operate its own
trains on the Italian network. It
intends to enter the market with
its own traction by the second
half of this year.
Train drivers have already
started their training, but already
Crossrail has been offering customers the opportunity to serve
Italy through a partnership with
Serfer (Trenitalia group). Seven
train pairs/week connect
Novara with Benelux.
The Crossrail direct train,
connecting Domodossola (a terminal owned by Crossrail) with
Duisburg, runs four times a
week, increasing to six times/
week by June, runs at an average of 90% capacity in both directions, claims the company.
On the Swiss path it carries new
Ford automobiles, on behalf of
Trenitalia, on double-deck wagons from Dillingen to Carimate
and Civitavecchia via the
Gotthard route.
Thanks to its relationship
with rolling stock leasing firm
CBRail, (another Babcock &
Brown subsidiary), Crossrail will
have 14 multi-system locomotives added to the existing fleet
by mid-2008. Once these locomotives have been delivered,
Crossrail will be able to provide
ers a year as well as around 60,000
swap bodies. LSCT handled
996,000 TEU last year (+ 14.1%),
all imp/ex traffic.
Meanwhile, rail handling capacity at the Interporto is being
expanded, co-funded by Cepim
and national network manager
RFI, and on completion the
intermodal facility will have 4 x
750m long (un)loading tracks.This
could be enough to attract Hupac.
Cepim is owned 35% by ENI
(cf Agip Petroli), 29% by local entities and 24% by credit institutions. It already accounts for
around 5 mtpa of cargo, of which
rail accounts for 30% (Trans-waggon, Railion, Railog). Its customers include Nestlé, Railion company Hangartner (Euroshuttle),
Barilla’s 3PL services provider
Number One, ENI and Fiat New
Holland. It boasts 60,000 m2 of dry
goods warehousing, 120,000 m2 of
chill/cold rooms and 42 hectares
of paved, open storage and parking. There is still plenty of space
available as Cepim’s concession
covers 2.5M m2.
Got a point?
Moretti’s intervention has not
proved popular with the port
community, but it could be argued
that the container handling sector, beset by squabbles and legal
disputes, has taken its eye off the
ball. Nationwide, container traffic, including transhipment, grew
just 3.9% last year to 9.044M TEU.
Many Italian o/d containers in
deepsea traffic still move through
the Alps to the Rhine seaports.
One port to watch is Naples,
where traffic increased 21.% last
year to 428,000 TEU, to some
extent at the expense of Salerno
due to some calls being switched.
CoNaTeCo’s traffic increased 33%
to 382,000 TEU, but local shippers and forwarders remain dissatisfied with the delays they exper ience due to customs and
phytosanitary rules practised in the
port. Gennaro Murolo, president
of the Campania shippers’ association, complained that it takes up
to 10 days to move a container
28
an uninterrupted service between Germany and Italy, offering at least 20 pairs of international trains/day (beyond the
Swiss national trains).
Mauro Pessano, previously
with Hannibal, the Contship
Italia/Trenitalia joint venture, is
CEO of Crossrail Italia and
group manager, intermodal
business. Walter G Finkbohner
is president and Hanspeter K
Schurter is general manager.
Sicily service
In another development in Italy,
Logistica e Servizi Intermodali
Srl (LSI), an affiliate of Italybased international transport
operator GMC Group, is
launching a new rail intermodal
service between Sicily and
Alessandria in north west Italy.
The service, will link the Sicilian ter minals at Alcamo
Diramazione (Trapani) and
Cannizzaro (Catania) with the
intermodal railhead at Tortona,
which is operated by Gavio affiliate Euromodale Srl. LSI itself
operates the Catania terminal,
under an agreement with FS.
There will be one train pair/
week, with northbound departures leaving Alcamo on Fridays
for arrival in Tortona on Sundays, and southbound trains leaving Tortona on Tuesdays and
reaching Alcamo on Thursday
and Catania on Friday. LSI is
planning a second, direct service between Tortona and Catania
to reduce transit time. ❏
through the port, double accepted
practice elsewhere.
Traffic at TCT Táranto increased 24.55% to 892,000 TEU
Enter
Vector
Andrea Nigulis, who ranks
among the top container terminal operations experts in
Europe, has set up his own port
consulting business,Vector Port
& Transport Solutions, operating from Italy but based in
Folkestone, England.
Vector is a “one man band”
but Nigulis now often works
in close collaboration with
Seaport Innovations Ltd, run
by Kent Busk, a Dane who was
previously with Maersk.
Between them they have a
wealth of knowledge that is
now being offered on a neutral basis to shipping lines, terminal operators and port authorities worldwide.
Nigulis himself has over 25
years container terminal operating experience with companies such as Eurokai/Contship
Italia, PSA Sinport, P&O Ports
and SECH in various ports in
Italy (La Spezia, Gioia Tauro,
Genova and Cagliari) and elsewhere in Europe (Hamburg,
Dortmund and Lisbon). ❏
Andrea Nigulis
April 2007
Section 7
8/5/07
7:03 pm
Page 29
WorldCargo
news
ITALY: PORT DEVELOPMENT/CARGO HANDLING/SHIPPING
and the operator has offered MSC a 3year tariff package to be its regional transhipment centre for Far East traffic. Looking for alternatives to Piraeus, which was
beset by strikes, MSC made some test calls,
but TCT has complained that, due to the
inactivity of the port authority, it is having to finance necessary dredging and
other infrastructure works itself. TCT’s
EVP Giancarlo Russo says that MSC informed the port authority that it requires
a depth of 14.5m at three berths at all
states of the tide if it is to make regular
calls, but nothing was done.
TCT’s existing berth line of 1500m is
insufficient, he added, as MSC will not
Ecobonuses
are confirmed
With the “green light” signalled by the
European Commission, Italian transport
minister Alessandro Bianchi has set out a
definitive cartography of 30 coastwise and
other shortsea ferry routes that could
qualify for “ecobonuses” by reducing
truck miles, within the overall framework
of Italy’s long-standing Sea Motorways
project goals and those of the EU’s Marco
Polo modal shift programme.
A budget of €240M, spread equally as
€80M/year between 2007 and 2009, has
been allocated to road hauliers or forwarders that opt for ferries instead of all-road.
This is to cover a rebate of 20% on ferry
tariffs for hauliers that make at least 80
truck trips/year per line of route, or 30%
in the case of new shipping links.
Payments for Spanish and/or French
origin/destination cargoes, measured over
links to Algeciras, Barcelona, Tarragona,
Valencia and Toulon, will be calculated
in proportion to the truck miles removed
from Italian roads. The government has
also taken steps to ensure that the benefits regime supports existing coastwise
and intra-Med ferry traffic, and does not
cannibalise it but builds on it.
In an effort to bypass the problems
faced by combi-transport arising from the
excessive fractionalism of the road haulage industry (“one man bands”) - Rome
has also allocated extra funds for haulier
groups making * 1600 truck trips/year
on any link.
Rome wants Madrid to adopt a similar programme, as Spanish support could
bring cumulative benefits to its initiative.
Meanwhile, Genoa-based RAM (Mediterranean Sea Motorways Network) is
working on ways to restart coastwise services between Venice and Catania. ❏
accept a berthing windows regime for
feeder ships. TCT, he added, cannot get
access to another 550m of quay wall, even
though it is included in its 1998 concession agreement (ie 2050m).
MSC also made a test call at MCT
Gioia Tauro with the 8100 TEU MSC
TORONTO and exchanged 3106 containers in 24h, with maximum productivity
reaching 140 moves/h. However, the terminal was then disrupted by strikes that
cost it 120,000 TEU of throughput in the
last weeks of the year. Contship Italia’s
CEO Cecilia Battistello even threatened
to “pull the plug” on the whole thing.
Another Genoa headache
Finally, the Port of Genoa, already “in the
wars” over the vexed question of the Sixth
Module at Voltri (for last report see
WorldCargo News, February 2007, p8), is
faced with another legal headache. The
Liguria regional court (TAR Liguria) has
ruled in favour of a complaint by Grendi
that the procedures adopted by the port
authority (APG) for the concessions of
the Multipur pose Ter minal at
Sampierdarena were incorrect.
Concessions for the designated area
between Ponte Canepa and Ponte Libia
were awarded by APG in November 2004
to Messina,Tirrenia,Terminal San Giorgio
(Scerni and Gavio) and Derna (Spinelli).
TAR Liguria concluded that Tirrenia
should not have been included in the
concessions as it had no traffic relevant to
the terminal’s vocation.
As if to defend itself against charges
that is spoiling things for its neighbours,
Grendi stated that its sole aim has been
to protect its own right to increase operations in Genoa. Grendi’s CEO Antonio
Musso says that APG has known the solution for some time, as an agreement
signed with Tirrenia last August resolves
the problem without injuring the interests of the other concessionaires.
Grendi has a temporary arrangement
with Spinelli that allows it to operate the
latter’s area and its traffic last year increased
by 25%, to 40,000 TEU of containers and
150,000t of general cargo. However, this
arrangement expires next year. Grendi has
stated that if the agreement with Tirrenia
is ratified, it will withdraw its application
for the whole of the Multipurpose Terminal area to be reassigned. ❏
Could Trenitalia’s involvement help solve the
Module 6 problem at VTE Genova?
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Cyprus job
for OMG
Padova-based Officine Mecchanice Galileo Srl has won another contract to repair a container crane - in this case one
that was damaged in a ship collision incident in the Port of Limassol.
The flared bow of a ship caught one
of the waterside legs and, because the diagonally opposite landside leg happened
to be locked in position by its anti-storm
block inserted in the pit, the impact
caused the non-contact waterside leg to
be lifted and pushed out of the rail.
As a result, the bogie wheel centre line
ended up 550mm far away from the railway and misaligned by 800mm with respect to the above-mentioned landside
leg. As the crane was out of service at the
time, the boom was stowed in the upright position.
OMG is responsible for all necessary
repairs, including replacing the damaged
leg sections, new fitments, etc. The new
leg sections will be positioned, aligned and
welded to the sill beam on the lower side
and to the leg/cross girder on the upper
side. Temporary structures will be added
to connect the right leg to the left leg of
each side of the crane The upper part of
the crane will be secured to the ground
with the installation of four temporary
pipes connected to a rack rail at ground
level. OMG is also responsible for
recommissioning the crane. ❏
April 2007
SMV Fork Lift Trucks (10 to 60 tons)
Your complete cooperation partner
The market’s most extensive series of big fork lift trucks. Strong trucks that
provides an effective handling of wood, paper, steel, concrete, rock, machines
and containers.
For over 50 years Konecranes Lifttrucks have worked closely together with the
industry to be able to offer unique, powerful and customised trucks and stackers.
Our trucks are optimally adapted to Your business. This is one of the factors that
make us to a leading manufacturer when you have high demands on performance,
productivity and quality, with lowest low life-cycle cost and environmental impact.
SMV Container Trucks (8 to 45 tons)
Few manufacturers can offer the same high performance and such a wide range
of specialised trucks as we do: from speedy empty-container trucks to strong
full-container trucks and compact RoRo trucks.
SMV Reach Stackers (10 to 45 tons)
The SMV trucks have many innovative solutions as standard: unique “box-type”
chassis, load-sensing hydraulics (power-on-demand), efficient low-emission
engines (high torque / low fuel consumption) and a new generation of driver
cabins with improved ergonomics and lowered noise level.
For optimal handling of empty and loaded container and trailers in terminals and
ports, at multi-track railways and on barges and for industrial handling of steel,
concrete and other heavy loads.
Konecranes Lifttrucks, part of Konecranes, a globally leading supplier of lifting
equipment, cranes, servicing and maintenance services, appr. 7,500 employees,
with operations in over 70 countries.
Konecranes Lifttrucks AB, P.O. Box 103, SE-285 23 Markaryd, SWEDEN
Phone +46 433 733 00 Fax +46 433 733 10 E-mail info@smvlifttrucks.se
www.smvlifttrucks.se
29
Section 7
8/5/07
7:03 pm
Page 30
The power of innovation.
The visionary new Reachstacker from Linde.
With its outstanding agility, superb precision and smooth control the new Reachstacker from Linde
embodies all the finest qualities of refined power.
Much more than just the sum of its parts, here is Man and machine in harmonious action. The fully
integrated, versatile and responsive control and operating system is a visionary concept designed to
make life easier. Combine this with Linde’s truly global service, spares and technical back-up and you
can understand why we are world leaders.
The visionary new Reachstacker from Linde: the next generation of working solutions delivering
greater productivity and efficiency.
Linde Heavy Truck Division Ltd
Linde Industrial Park, Merthyr Tydfil CF48 4LA, GB
Phone +44 (0) 1443 624200, Fax +44 (0) 1443 624302
E-mail info.forklifts@linde-htd.com, www.linde-htd.com
Head Office
Linde Material Handling Division, PO Box 62, 63736 Aschaffenburg, Germany
Phone +49 6021 990, Fax +49 6021 99 1570
E-mail info.forklifts@linde-mh.com, www.linde.com/linde-forklifts
Linde Material Handling
Section 6
8/5/07
7:08 pm
Page 31
WorldCargo
news
CARGO HANDLING
Trucking on at a good speed
The heavy lift truck market
seems to be still running at
high levels, even if the peak of
2005-6 is unlikely to be
matched in the main container and industrial handling
segments.
Customers generally are increasingly aware of life cycle costs
and this helps protect suppliers to
the extent that the key is not price
but the balance of price with performance. Rental companies are
sometimes prepared to pay more
than end users if they feel they can
recoup the extra outlay through
being able to deliver lower
downtimes and reduce their servicing costs.
Breaking the mould
Generally speaking, this is a
“conservative” industr y, but
there is also room for product
innovation. It is tr ue that
Liebherr did not set particularly
ambitious sales targets for its
unusual LRS 645 with the distinctive curved boom, but these
targets have been met and the
availability of new capacity at
Rostock has enabled the company to raise them going forward.
The machine is also unusual
for having hydrostatic drive and
Liebherr has developed this by
introducing individual dr ive
wheel drive.This means that steering is partly effected by the front
axle and this reduces wear and tear
on all the tyres. In addition, says
Liebherr, side forces on the steering and drive axles are reduced,
thus extending the life of the
steering components.
The LRS 645 has a capacity
of 45t up to 6 x 9ft 6in high in
the first row, 38t up to 5-high in
the second row and 23.5t up to
4-high in the first row. For machines fitted with a combi-attachment, capacity is 45t up to 5-high
in the first row, 34t up to 5-high
still in the second row and 19.5t
up to 4-high in the third rows.
Into 2008 already
From Sweden Svetruck reports
that 2007 is basically booked out
and the company is already planning schedules for 2008, which has
already shaped up to be another
Liebherr now has more production capacity to cater for LRS 645 demand
good year. Svetruck has been enjoying buoyant demand from a
number of industrial sectors, not
least the Norwegian oil and gas
supply industry, mainly for 15tonners but also for 37t and 42t
FLTs to handle heavy pipes.
Svetruck is also currently dealing with an enquiry for two more
dedicated laden container handlers
that are equivalent to 60t SWL in
an FLT application.
Takeover delay?
There is still no news on
Cargotec’s takeover of CVS
Ferrari.The approval of the competition authorities is still awaited;
originally it was thought that this
would have been received by
March/April, but this target seems
to have slipped. Meanwhile there
is market gossip that the deal has
been delayed for other reasons
(pertaining to the valuation), but
there is no evidence that this is
affecting customer confidence in
either CVS or Kalmar.
For example, through its longstanding German distr ibutor
Mafo, CVS has received an order
from Buss Hansa Terminal (BHT)
in Hamburg for eight new, series
4 reach stackers, type F479.5.
These machines, fitted with a 340
hp Volvo Tier 3 engine and Clark
transmission, stack 5 x 9ft 6in high
up to 45t SWL in the first row
and 4-high, 35t SWL in the second row.
BHT previously “standardised”
on CVS Ferrari reach stackers and,
although the deal for renting the
new machines from Mafo predated the announcement that
CVS was to be acquired by
Cargotec and be controlled by
Kalmar, it shows that the customer
is confident that its good relationships with Mafo as the Italian
OEM’s dealer Mafo will be allowed to continue, as indeed has
bene promised by Cargotec to all
CVS’s dealers.
“The new equipment is part
of our concept to increase the efficiency of our container handling,” said BHT’s managing director Heinz Wasser. Buss Ports is
modernising the terminal while
operations continue normally.
Shed 81 has been demolished to
provide more open storage space
for containers and IT systems and
operational procedures are being
improved. Buss is investing several
million Euros in this modernisation programme and it should be
finished by mid-2007.
The first two F479.5s have already been delivered and the remaining six are due this month.
The machines have a self-weight
of 78.2t and their laden travel
speed is 25 kph.
The fact that BHT is such an
important “northern” customer
underscores the point that the
notion that a Kalmar and CVS
Ferrari tie-up matches “north and
south” is too simplistic. As previously noted in WorldCargo News,
Germany is CVS Ferrari’s most
important market outside Italy for
reach stackers.According to Mafo’s
CEO Robert Hutlof, no less than
23 of the 60 reach stackers supplied in Germany during 2006
were made by CVS Ferrari, a market share of 38%.
ordered a total of 14 reach stackers, masted container handlers and
FLTs. Fantuzzi also says it received
an order from an undisclosed customer in Latin America for three
reach stackers and 13 dedicated
ECH mast trucks.
According to Fantuzzi’s sales
and marketing manager Rosanna
Gennari, the Lentigione plant is
currently turning out 550 machines a year, including sideloaders
as well as FLTs, dedicated container handling lift trucks and
reach stackers. The plant has almost reached saturation point and
serious consideration is being
given to another extension.
As previously reported
(WorldCargo News, February 2007,
p2), Fantuzzi Group has been restructured into four divisions, with
the Fantuzzi product line run by
Mario Corsi. The group has set a
target of going public within a few
years. Last year, says Gennari,
group turnover was provisionally
around €418M.
Steel handlers
Russian job
Orders received by Fantuzzi for
heavy FLTs include one from Italian steel logistics company
Gruppo Riva for 17 FLTs from
32t to 48t SWL, with special lifting equipment (vacuum or magnet) to handle coils and slabs.
Misurata Free Zone in Libya
Kalmar Industries has received an
order from JSC Sea Port of Saint
Petersburg (MTPSP) for 24 machines for delivery from May to
September this year. The order
comprises 12 FLTs with lifting
capacities ranging between 10t
and 32, three reach stackers and
New F479.5 reach stackers from CVS Ferrari at Buss Hansa Terminal
one dedicated EC mast truck,
along with eight TRX182 terminal tractors.
MTPSP is the holding for a
number of stevedoring companies
that together account for about
20% of all the cargo handled in
the Big Port of Saint Petersburg
amounting to some 11.8 mt in
2006, comprising metals, coal,
chemical, timber and containers.
Last year it was acquired by
Novolipetsk Metallurgical Works,
Russia’s third largest steel maker
and some US$50M was allocated
towards renewal of cargo handling
equipment and ground transport
fleet (WorldCargo News, February
2006, p36 and August 2006, p28).
Equipment acquired last year
included a 28t ro-ro FLT from
Konecranes Lifttrucks (ex-SMV
Lifttrucks) and two Volvo L60E
wheel loaders. The group’s existing fleet from Kalmar comprises
more than 80 machines, made up
of FLTs up to 42t, reach stackers
and terminal tractors.
The new FLTs on order from
Kalmar will replace some older
equipment and will be used for
handling steel, aluminium products and containers. The remaining equipment will be largely engaged in handling the growing
number of containers at the port.
The Setra Group, Sweden’s
largest timber products company,
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April 2007
31
Section 6
9/5/07
12:43 pm
Page 32
WorldCargo
news
CARGO HANDLING
A Fantuzzi reach stacker in Kallo, Belgium.
A model CS45 KM reach stacker, fitted with
a Volvo TAD 952 VE engine and a type
SPR45L spreader, has just been supplied to
Grup TCB’s operation in Gijón in Spain
is to standardise its handling activities
through a multi-year rental contract with
Kalmar for 31 specially developed FLTs,
each with a lifting capacity of 15 tonnes.
The announcement is the culmination of
an exhaustive search for the “perfect” FLT
initiated by Setra almost two years ago.
Most of the new trucks are scheduled
to be in place this month and next. Kalmar
will provide service, maintenance and financing of the vehicles and guarantee
their performance at an agreed cost for
the entire contractual period.
“Our rental concept represents a cost-
effective total solution for customers,
whereby we integrate development,
maintenance and financing,” said Jan
Ohlsson, MD of Kalmar Sweden.
Setra has been looking for new equipment to operate in its 12 sawmills located
across Sweden, from Seskarö near
Haparanda in the north to Vimmerby in
the south. The company’s site managers
were joined by more than 90 drivers to
look for a machine that combines efficient and accurate handling with good
ergonomic and environmental credentials.
“We came up with very clear specifications for our new sawmill trucks,” said
Jerker Nyström, the company’s production manager. “Our joint development
work with Kalmar has now evolved into
a multi-year rental contract.”
In line with the drivers’ wishes, the
new FLTs feature a range of additional
equipment compared to standard trucks.
Piling holders, an anti-skid device on the
wings, splash protection on the drive and
steering wheels are all crucial to the design and positioning of the equipment.
The cabin features adjustable armrests,
mini-wheel steering and a hydraulic joystick, all of which reduce the strain on
the driver. Sun-protection curtains and a
raised roof reduce the risk of the driver
being dazzled while steps have been taken
to reduce noise levels. All trucks are
equipped with an automatic stop function and a short-term parking heater that
starts automatically.
To reduce energy consumption and
subsequently alleviate the burden on the
environment, the contract between Setra
and Kalmar includes training in “eco driving” for all drivers. The trucks display
hourly fuel consumption rates.
Finally, the US Army Tank-Automotive and Ar maments Command
(TACOM) in Warren (Mi) has awarded
Kalmar RT Center LLC a US$5.2M contract, on a sole source basis, to perform
reset work on the federal government’s
Rough Terrain Cargo Handler Vehicles
in the Middle East. The RTCH reach
stackers were developed by Kalmar and
TACOM with the ability to drive over
unimproved, rough terrain surfaces while
handling 20ft or 40ft containers. Employees of Cibolo-based Kalmar RT Center
will perform the work in Ahmadi, Kuwait and the work will be complete by
the end of July.
More competition
Corbis/ TCS
The European market for medium FLTs
is facing more competition from China.
Samuk Lift Trucks Ltd, the company run
by Sir Neville Bowman-Shaw, is now importing several models of FLTs built by
Hangcha into the UK. On a 1200mm
load centre there is a 14-tonner with a
3.35m wheelbase (RY1412) and a 16tonner (RY1612) and 18-tonner
(RY1812) with a 3.65m wheelbase. The
last truck can be upscaled to 21t on a
900mm load centre (RY2109).
There are general purpose fork trucks
that can be used to handle empty/light
load containers, stacking up to 2-high, and
Samuk believes that there is a platform to
start importing a dedicated EC range with
taller masts.The trucks for Europe are fitted with Cummins QSB6.7 (205 hp) engines, ZF 3WG171 transmissions and
Kessler drive axles with wet disc brakes.
New Hyster trucks
Do you need to get it there fast?
Get exactly what
you need from Hyster
When it comes to moving heavy cargo or containers fast, you
want more than top-quality materials handling equipment. You
also want a partner who understands your operation and how
to optimise it with the right handling solution. This is exactly
what you get from your Hyster dealer. In addition to providing
strong and reliable lift trucks, container handlers and reach
stackers, our dealers offer flexible financing, rental schemes,
fast service, accessories programmes and a whole lot more.
So when you have to think big and fast, visit us at
www.hyster.co.uk or call 0031 24 374 2555.
32
Later this year Hyster is introducing new,
Tier 3 medium capacity FLTs, the 16-18
XM12 series (ie 1200mm load centre),
with an option for a shorter wheelbase
when compactness is needed for tight
manoeuvring. It has also just started production of Tier 3 FLTs in the 8-16t range
on a 600mm load centre (8-16 XM6).
This features a new counterweight design and a new cooling system.
A 12-tonner in this series has just been
supplied as an EC handler for empty tank
containers weighing up to 4t. It has a specially adapted, container stacking frame
attached to the carriage. It is fitted with
10.00-20 tyres all-round.
Hyster is continuing its programme
of introducing new reach stackers and the
front stabiliser models S-CH and S-IH
with additional capacity for third container row and second rail handling will
be introduced later this year. Three new
RS series container handlers were introduced last September, followed by three
combi-handlers in November and the
front stabiliser models are the last to be
rolled out. They include a long wheelbase machine for third row container
barge operations.
In the UK Barloworld has just supplied DFDS Tor Line in Immingham with
a new RS46-36 CH, including the new
standard feature whereby the cab can be
moved all the way forward (2.6m) to sit
over the drive axle. Normally, this is considered essential for combi-handlers, to
see the grapple feet at ground level when
handling trailers and swap bodies, but is
far less common with top handlers.
Forward-looking
Barloworld, which represents Hyster in
several parts of the world (eg USA, South
Africa, Belgium, Great Britain) explains
April 2007
Section 5
9/5/07
1:09 pm
Page 33
WorldCargo
news
CARGO HANDLING
Tractors pull ahead on emissions
General purpose, Chinese-built 16-1200 from Samuk with European main
componentry. Could this new RY series be the basis of a dedicated ECH range?
that drivers appreciate the full forward position for long travel as
they have much better forward
visibility. It is also useful when (un)
picking a container, as the driver
is closer to the twistlocks, provided
of course the stacking height is not
too high, in which case the rearward position is more suitable.
Barloworld points out that the
FLT market in the UK has moved
increasingly towards rental. The
ports industry is no exception and
many operators have outsourced
service and spare parts. Barloworld
alone employs 600 service engineers in the UK (all Hyster customer segments) and all service
vehicles are tracked in real-time.
Short and sweet
It short-term rental market includes three 2.5 year old reach
stackers (which have just come out
of Tilbury when two new IHs and
one new CH were supplied) and
two 48t dedicated container handling mast trucks and various
medium (10-16t) FLTs.
It wants to build this up as most
of the heavy lift plant available to
port operators is 7-8 years old and
often in poor condition and, even
then, it is in short supply. Like CVS
Ferrari’s UK dealer Shad Equipment, Barloworld has a low bed,
multi-wheel road trailer so it can
move reach stackers around the
country in one piece. This obviates the need for special travel permits and shortens commissioning
time as the boom doers not have
to be removed for the transport.
SMV UK, the UK distributor
for Konecranes Lifttrucks, has also
identified the need for short-term
rental equipment and says it has
been “frustrated at the lack of
available supply within the market” and, where machines are
available, they tend to be almost
beyond their self-life and their
“poor condition often means that
driver acceptance, environmental
and reliability issues pose a serious problem for the user.”
The company has set up a new
business venture SMV Rentals
Ltd, dedicated to short-term hire
of lift trucks above 10t capacity
up to the heaviest reach stackers.
This company is already investing
in brand new Konecranes’ equipment, mostly of the new style, ‘B’
generation and its policy is to
maintain an average fleet age of
no more than five years.
Magnetic touch
New orders for SMV UK include
an SMV 4531 reach stacker for
Nor-Cargo in Aberdeen. The
spreader from Elme is fitted with
lifting eyes to handle sling loads.
The company has also supplied
MultiServ Group in Port Talbot
(for Corus) with a reach stacker
for steel slabs that is fitted with
hydraulic powered units fed from
the truck’s main hydraulic pump.
The result is a small, compact
power pack conveniently located
under the bonnet that offers full
magnet capability without the vision problems associated with fitting an engine-powered generator on the counterweight.
Other recent deals for
Konecranes include eight 42-1200
FLTs to Porto di Carrara in Italy
to handle stone, eight 16-1200s to
the Swedish Army and a 25-1200,
a dedicated EC truck and a reach
stacker for Maersk in Morocco.
The company has just shipped
a 41-1200 FLT, three 16-1200
FLTs and a dedicated laden container handling mast truck (42 G4
gantry truck) to Esperance Port
Authority in Australia. These are
all fitted with Tier 2 engines from
Volvo and the heavy trucks feature the new, high-mount centrally-located cab position.
New products in the range are
the SMV 5/6 EC and SMV 6/7
EC DS mast trucks (ie double
stacking) using Elme 1 over 1 attachments.These have an SWL of
10t. All new machines from
Konecranes Lifttrucks are now
available with a built-in
breathalyser that prohibits machine ignition in the event of a
positive result. Some customers
have been asking for other substance abuse detectors (drugs).
Piling it on
Linde HTD’s 40t SWL gantry
trucks can stack 9ft in high containers 3-, 4- or 5-high (38t SWL
at 5-high) and they can be fully
adapted to the requirements of the
company’s US distributor, MiJack, including slope pile for the
spreader. Mi-Jack is particularly
strong in the US rail intermodal
sector and Linde HTD is developing with Mi-Jack a new reach
stacker for intermodal duties.
A key requirement is an SWL
under toplift of 35t (77,000 lbs)
at 7m (23ft 4ins) load centre to
allow not only for the usual distance to the second track but also
the wider “stand-off ” between the
front of the machine and the near
track than is practised in Europe.
The design features a 7m wheelbase and will also be fitted with
front support jacks. A Linde
C4531 reach stacker was ordered
recently by the Port of Felixstowe
- the first time in a number of
years that a new Line reach stacker
has been supplied to the UK’s biggest container handler. ❏
Germany’s ZF Friedrichshafen
AG has introduced a new transmission for terminal tractors that,
it reports, cuts fuel consumption
by between 15 and 20%, called the
ZF AS-Tronic Mid. ZF is wellknown in the ports industry. Its
ZF WG powershift transmissions
are already common in heavy duty
4x4 ro-ro terminal tractor applications and are also used on some
lighter duty tractors. For example,
when Mafi introduced its MT
25YT 4x2 tractor in 2005, it offered it with a 3WG161 transmission as standard.
Terberg first introduced the ZF
WG201 powershift transmissions
in heavy duty, 4x4 ro-ro tractors
back in 1994. Since then all
Terberg 4x4 models have been fitted with ZF powershift transmissions and they have been offered
as an option in the 4x2 models.
Currently Terberg is installing ZF
Ergopower transmissions including the 3WG161, 6WG211 and
the 6WG260 model.
Yard choices
Generally speaking, however, in
the lighter duty, 4x2 tractor segment Allison 3000 series transmissions dominate the market.
ZF is targeting this application
with its ZF AS-Tronic technology. It features a countershaft
transmission with a dry clutch
instead of a torque converter.
The concept was originally
developed for heavy duty commercial applications, but more recently ZF developed lighter
weight versions aimed at applications such as distribution vehicles
in urban environments that tend
to be characterised by constant
stop/start work.
The AS-Tronic mid model is
suited to the torque requirements of terminal tractors and
comes in two models 840mm
(SAE2 clutch housing) and 910
mm (SAE1 clutch housing) in
length and with masses in the
190-205 kg range. By eliminating the torque converter ZF has
been able to cut weight significantly and, it claims, the transmission is quieter and more fuel
efficient, and delivers more
power to the drive wheels.
Software control
The new transmission is not only
a gearbox, but includes a harness,
shift lever and a display. Gears can
Terminal tractor operators are showing interest in a
new transmission that is claimed to offer significant
fuel savings and, meanwhile, other fuel saving and
emissions reduction initiatives are taking shape
be selected manually but in automatic mode the transmission is
controlled by software that manages shifting to keep the engine
in the optimum operating range.
Sophisticated software governs the
shifting and the operation of the
clutch to maintain driver comfort and respond appropriately
to shift-up, shift-down conditions and whether the vehicle
is coasting or pulling.
The gearbox also selects the
appropriate gear and time to
change gears. While power shift
transmissions with torque converters have four or five gears the
ZF-AS Tronic mid has 12 speeds
Versatility for
material handling
Meclift Variable Reach Trucks
Your choice for
industrial applications
such as handling of
• sawn timber
• steel coils
• other heavy loads
More speed and
performance for
container handling
and heavy lifts.
Superior solution for
heavy lifts in confined
places.
Oy Meclift Ltd
Lentolantie 2 • 36220 Kangasala • Finland
Tel. +358 20 743 1120 • Fax +358 20 743 1121
www.meclift.fi • e-mail: sales@meclift.fi
This Hyster RS 46-36 CH has just gone to DFDS in Immingham
April 2007
33
Section 5
8/5/07
7:22 pm
Page 34
WorldCargo
news
CARGO HANDLING
Another cost advantage is that
no transmission cooler is required.
The large gear range and selection software keeps the transmission temperature lower and no
cooler is needed in operating temperatures less than 40 deg.
The oil change interval is
longer than with powershift transmissions and Witte says the recommended oil change interval for
a terminal tractor application is 3
years, using ZF Ecofluid M. The
oil change volume is “only around
8.7l,” he added.Another benefit is
the control algorithm prevents
misuse by drivers and subsequent
driveline damage.
Terberg Benschop bv installed
the first AS- Tronic Mid transmission in combination with a
Cummins Tier 3 engine in October 2006 and has since done extensive testing with the ZF ASTronic Mid transmission with several customers.
“These tests have shown in realistic, real life operation fuel consumption benefits of about 15%,”
Witte added. Other touted benefits include extended oil drain intervals; the transmission fluid has
to be changed only once every
three years.
in forward and 2 speeds in reverse.
ZF’s application manager
Cornelius Witte explains that
when to shift and into which gear
is controlled by the “driving strategy.” In a port application this
means that a tractor without a
trailer will take off in higher gear,
whereas a loaded tractor might
start in lower gear. Any incline is
detected by measuring “driving
resistance” and lower gears are selected as appropriate.
Cost savings
Terberg raises the roof
Terberg Benschop is now offering a taller cab as a standard option on all its TT/RT range of
terminal/ro-ro tractors.The cab
has been given a “facelift” and
roof height has been raised by
350mm, which provides a
number of benefits.
These include easier entry
and exit to and from the cab, improved upward vision with the
optional roof window installed,
better storage facilities in the cab
for items such as safety helmet,
safety package, gloves, lunch box,
etc and, of course, more room
for the driver .
Standing headroom in the
cab is now 1.84m.The spacious
interior enables the driver to
carry out his work in greater
comfort and that results in improved safety, says Terberg.
The picture above shows an
RT282 with the tall cab in a 4trailer MTS application at Rail
Service Center Rotterdam, approved for GCWs up to 275t. ❏
The main benefit of keeping the
engine operating in the optimum
range is reduced fuel consumption
and, claims ZF, depending on the
application, fuel consumption can
be reduced by 15-20%.
Actual savings depend on several factors including the engine,
the terminal topography and the
time spent idling. Even so, as regards the last point, Witte says
normal fuel consumption when
idling is much reduced with the
AS Tronic because of its reduced
drag torque. This is particularly
useful in a port application where
terminal tractors spend a significant amount of time idling waiting in line for cranes.
Our innovative
trailers and grabs
The AS-Tronic “family” covers a range of applications from 6 to 12 speeds and
with torques up to 3000 N/m.This picture from ZF shows the “mid” model
The transmission is now being offered as an option on the
YT182 andYT222 model.Terberg
states that the higher initial purchase cost of the ZF AS Tronic
Mid will be amortised very
quickly by the reduced fuel consumption.
CAN requirements
The AS-Tronic uses CAN for
communication between the
transmission and the engine,
meaning the terminal tractor
needs to operate on CAN for it
to be fitted. Last year Kalmar
launched the i-series of “intelligent” terminal tractors as “the first
ever series of tractors to use
CANbus control technology.”
The i-series uses CANbus for
integration of the engine, transmission, hydraulic system and
other functions of the tractor.
However, a full CANbus communication system is not required to
fit the AS-Tronic transmission.
The 247 terminal tractors
contract that an PSA Singapore
has ordered from Kalmar
(WorldCargo News, January 2007,
p2) will be fitted with the ZF
AS-Tronic transmission, but
CAN will be used only for
communication between the
engine and the transmission.
This order is a significant milestone for ZF. Kalmar is now testing the AS-Tronic. It is understood that the transmission will
be matched to Mercedes
OM90/92 6LA engines in the
tractors for Singapore.
Already on the bus
Although Kalmar is claiming a first
with its use of CANbus on the
new i-series, Capacity of Texas,
Inc, part of special vehicles manufacturing group Collins Industries,
built more than 400 tractors with
CANbus technology last year and
it has now standardised on it.
Capacity’s Heath Parsons says
the level at which CANbus technology is utilised is a key point.
At the simplest level CANbus is
often used to communicate between an electronic engine and
gearbox, but Capacity has gone
further than this and is using
CANbus J1939 technology as the
main communication link that
drives data to the cab. The benefits are simplified wiring, less
maintenance and improved troubleshooting through downloading
of diagnostic information - the
same benefits as Kalmar cited
when it launched the i-series.
Parsons says that Capacity has
We are one of the world’s leading specialists in
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due to our construction experience, innovation and
worldwide supply through matching the bulk-,
container- and industrial requirements. Let us prove
that our solutions match with your highest demands.
From within our group of
companies we can supply
Dump trailers
Earth moving
machine-equipment
Beco Boforce
Booms and Fronts
34
Programme:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Multi trailer systems
Skeletal Trailers
Roll Trailers
Goosenecks
Industrial Trailers
Custom made trailers
and concepts
• Mechanical clamshells
• Hydraulic clamshells
• Electro-hydraulic
clamshells
• Electro-hydraulic
Orange Peel grabs
• Booms and Fronts
enjoyed a period of strong growth
in recent years and is hoping to
build more than 1500 tractors this
year. As previously reported
(WorldCargo News, November
2006, p42), Capacity has new
owners after Collins Industries was
acquired by New York-based private equity group American Industrial Partners (AIP).
AIP looks for opportunities
where it sees potential to improve
a business through operating improvements and investments in
technology in particular. At Capacity it has purchased new CNC
machines, implemented quality
initiatives and boosted aftermarket service.
A new parts warehouse and
fully automated data collection
service have been set up. Capacity’s US dealers now have on-line
ordering and the company is
working bring its overseas agents
on-line as well.
Parsons adds that Capacity has
managed to more than double its
volume over the last few years
without a significant increase in
lead times. While lead times are
mostly dependant on component
suppliers, Capacity is currently
quoting 120-150 days for specified machines.
Training disciplines
Stock tractors are available within
weeks. A very large order for 378
units for the United States Postal
Service (USPS) was completed last
year and, he says, the training requirements under the contract
were more difficult to supply than
the machines themselves. USPS
required all of its 100-plus technicians to undergo a two week
course consisting of classroom and
hands-on instruction.
In May Capacity is bringing
together all its dealers for training
in the new regeneration technology on the 2007 Cummins ISB
series engines. These feature an
exhaust after treatment system
consisting of a diesel oxidation
catalyst (DOC) - which some US
ports have been retrofitting to existing equipment - and a catalysed
particulate matter filter.
Alternatives
The interest in alternative fuel
terminal tractors in the US has
never been higher than at
present, especially on the west
coast. Last year the San Pedro
Bay ports of Los Angeles and
Long Beach released a clean air
action plan and LA executive
director Dr Geraldine Knatz
Hybrid drive technology is firmly on the agenda of terminal tractor manufacturers,
particularly in the US. (Photo: Kalmar, Ottawa)
Beco Bleijenberg
Grab-equipment
P.O. box 158, 4130 ED Vianen, Holland • De Limiet 18, 4131 NR Vianen, Holland
Tel. +31 (0)347 - 323100 • Fax +31 (0)347 - 377780
E-mail: info@ buiscar.com • info@bleijenberg.nl • info@beco-vianen.com
Internet: www.buiscar.com • www.bleijenberg.nl • www.beco-vianen.com
April 2007
Section 5
8/5/07
7:25 pm
Page 35
WorldCargo
news
CARGO HANDLING
recently stated that, regardless of state
and federal standards, the port expects
its tenants to comply with it.
In an emissions inventory performed
at Long Beach in 2002, cargo handling
equipment was identified as the largest
source of non-marine emissions and tractors, or yard hostlers, were the largest
source of all equipment emissions - responsible for 64% of PM emissions and
59% of NOx emissions from handling
equipment.
US ports have been adopting various
measures to reduce emissions from terminal tractors. At Massport, Boston some
terminal tractors have been fitted with
DOCs while the Port of Virginia has for
some time been fitting on-road diesel
engines to terminal tractors because
they meet tougher emissions standards
and offer improved efficiency.Virginia
has replaced around 100 engines and
programmed the new units to shut off
after idling for 15 minutes.
The ports of Los Angeles and Long
Beach, the EPA West Coast Collaborative and a number of industry bodies are
currently involved in projects to assess
LNG and hybrid tractors in port operations. On the LNG side, the results of a
6-month tractor pilot project are not yet
available as the emissions testing has been
delayed.The tractors were to be tested in
a steady state on a dynamometer and in
testing at Long Beach Container Terminal, but in December the contract for the
dynamometer testing was still being finalised and the live use test plan still being reviewed.
As noted above, Capacity is a major
supplier to USPS and Parsons says it is in
discussions about hybrid technology for
terminal tractors. Developing the technology is, however, going to take some
time. The LA project aims to select suppliers this year, evaluate a prototype in
2008 and complete testing by early 2009.
As also previously reported in
WorldCargo News, another technology that
is being examined in parallel to hybrids
is an all-electric tow tractor for drayage
between the three main terminals at LA
and the off-dock Intermodal Container
Transfer Facility operated by Union Pacific Railroad. Balqon Corporation has
been part-funded to develop an electric
towing tractor with a towing capacity of
60,000 lbs, top speed of 25 mph and range
of 40 miles per charge.
This is understood to be the first Terberg
terminal tractor to be fitted with the ZF ASTronic Mid transmission in a commercial
application. The new transmissions from ZF
were extensively tested by Terberg in customer
trials with the YT 182/222 models over a
two-year period before being adopted
In approving its share of the funding the Board of the South Coast Air
Quality Management District noted
that “...there is potential to transfer
such technology to yard hostlers, airport uses and other low-speed tow type
operations, resulting in potential emission reductions beyond 2010 standards
for on-road and off-road uses.” These
are fairly ambitious applications for allelectric mobile plant , but clearly the
political momentum is there to bring
about change. ❏
Different benchmarks
The LNG tractors have been in use since
June 2006 and will be compared against
four other tractors with the following
fuel/engine options: LNG with 2005 onroad engine; diesel with Tier 1 off-road
engine; diesel with Tier 2 off-road engine; and diesel with 2005 on-road engine. Results are expected this summer.
One terminal operator has already
decided to convert its entire tractor fleet
to LNG. In February, SSA Mar ine
(SSAM) announced that it had achieved
a 77% reduction in NOx and a 93% reduction in PM by converting terminal
tractors at its Terminal A in Long Beach
to LNG. SSAM’s EVP Andy McLauchlan
said “the fuel conversion and resulting
emissions reductions are working beyond
our expectations. We intend to convert
the rest of our fleet starting in Southern
California and moving to our other US
operations.” SSAM is working worth
Prometheus Energy Company on equipment conversions and refuelling infrastructure. Kalmar currently offers an LNG
machine and Capacity is set to show a
new LNG terminal tractor to leading customers over the next two months.
Hybrid option
As well as LNG there is strong interest in
hybrid terminal tractors because they have
the potential to offer significant emissions
benefits without requiring involving major changes to existing fuelling infrastructure as has to be put in place for LNG.
As previously reported a hybrid evaluation project is under way in which
Kalmar, along with the environmental
agencies, is involved.The first stage of the
project it to develop and integrate a hybrid drive train before it is tested in a 6month study similar to the LNG project.
The four comparison vehicles for the hybrid test project will be diesel models with
Tier 1, 2 and 3 off-road engines and a
2005 or later on-road engine.
LA officials have may given the impression that a hybrid terminal tractor will
use a diesel electric system by referring
to it as a “Prius-like” vehicle - a Prius
being Toyota’s diesel electric hybrid passenger car. However, in a truck/terminal
tractor application a diesel hydraulic option is another option.
Testing hydraulics
Last year the USPS began testing a diesel
hydraulic delivery vehicle in working
conditions. A high pressure accumulator
stores regenerative energy and drive three
hydraulic motors incorporated into the
rear axle.The engine can be switched off
completely when not required.The USPS
has tested one prototype and a second is
to be tested this year.
April 2007
35
Section 5
8/5/07
7:27 pm
Page 36
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Section 4
14/5/07
2:06 pm
Page 37
WorldCargo
news
ROLL-ON/ROLL-OFF
Ro-ro shipping activity on a roll
Fuelled by capacity shortages,
ro-ro newbuilding activity is
brisk. New orders include one
placed by the privately-owned
Finnish Rettig group for two
(plus two) “RoFlex” multi-purpose, ro-ros with Flensburger
Schiffbau Gesell-schaft in Germany, worth €100M.
Slated for delivery in the second and third quarters of 2001,
the Super IA ice class ships will
be powered by 12,000 kW engines and have a service speed of
19 knots. They are 195.4m long
and will have 2900 lane-metres.
Rettig is also expanding by acquisition and last year acquired another privately-owned Finnish
shipping company, Engship, based
in Turku. All the ships are managed by Rettig’s Bore arm.
Polish operator Unity Line has
ordered two 3000 lane-metre ro-
Rettig’s latest ro-ros will have 2900 lane-metres for freight
ros for its new SwinoujscieTrelleborg service from the SSN
Szczecin yard, for delivery in
2010-11. Unity opened this new
route in February this year. Its established Swinoujscie-Ystad service carried 142,000 trailers last
year, 13% more than in 2005.
Britanny Ferries has experienced strong freight growth and
carried 250,000 HGVs last year
between Cherbourg and Port-
There is still no firm information on why Grimaldi’s deepsea con-ro ship
REPUBBLICA DI GENOVA heeled and capsized in Antwerp whilst loading
cars and tractors through the stern ramp for Luanda (last month’s WorldCargo
News, p1). According to cargolaw.com the cause of the capsize is known but
has not been released.The ship had finished loading top deck containers and
all possible corrections to the listing were carried out according to standard
procedures, but for some reason they did not work and it has been speculated
that there was a malfunction in the self-heeling sytem. It has also been
stated that the vessel was still bunkering
smouth/Poole. The company has
ordered a new freight-only ro-ro
from Aker Finnyards with a capacity for 120 accompanied trailers
and sufficient cabin space for their
drivers, and will also be introducing another ro-pax into the service next year. It also intends to start
a weekly service between GB and
Spain (Portsmouth or Poole and
Gijón or Santander).
Grimaldi Holding SpA has
taken delivery of CORRAGIO, the
first of a series of four (plus four
options) stern ramp, ro-pax ferries
from the Nuovi Cantieri Apuania
shipyard in Marina di Carrara.The
second ship, AUDACIA, will be de-
livered this October, with TENACIA
due next spring. In total the order
is worth around €450M and the
first three ships have already been
chartered to Grandi Navi Veloci
(GNV) run by Grimaldi Genova,
as part of its expanding Motorways of the Sea programme.
Although described as cruise
ferries, the first three ships have
more capacity for freight than previous Grimaldi ships of this type,
even though they can each cater
for up to 500 passengers. The
25,000 dwt ships have an loa of
200m, a beam of 27m and a service speed of 25 knots.
They have seven decks, of
which four have their own access
and the others are accessed by
movable ramps. They have 3000
lane-metres for freight or cars and
slots for up to 30 cars with campers/caravans.
Grimaldi has obtained “Green
Passport” status for CORAGGIO, a
voluntary code aimed at reducing
pollution and wastage. The vessel
is deployed in GNV’s GenovaMalta-Tunisia service, which is
CORAGGIO
is the first of a new series of four (plus four) ro-paxes for Grimaldi
important for shipments of textiles, agri-food products, pharmaceuticals. Frequency varies between weekly and three times/
week according to the season.
Aldo Grimaldi has already
confirmed that the option for four
more ships will be exercised, but
the fourth ship in the initial order
and the four option ships will be
somewhat bigger than the first
three ships and will be able to cater for up to 900 passengers.
GNV is one of Italy’s leading
ship operators and is focused on
national and intra-Mediterranean
cabotage services. Last year it accounted for shipments of 435,000
cars, 2.3M lane-metres of trailers
and other rolling freight and 1.3M
passengers. Shareholders include
Investitori Associati, De Agostini
and Charme, through the Private
Equity Permira fund.
Turkish deal
To increase load factors in the
Western Mediterranean, GNV has
made agreements with the Turkish UN Ro-Ro group, regarding
on-shipment of Turkish trailers
from Livorno and Civitavecchia.
UN Ro-Ro (ex-UND Ro-Ro)
is now shipping some 240,000
trailers/year for various European
destinations into Trieste and has
transit agreements with the Italian government that allows its
drivers to pick up trailers there
bound for the Iberian peninsula
Access deals abound
Cargotec’s MacGregor business
unit has received significant ro-ro
access equipment orders worth
around €19M from different ship
yards in connection with various
newbuildings. Japan’s Kyokuyo
Shipyard Corporation has ordered
equipment for four PCTCs being built for Norwegian owner
Gram, comprising a stern ramp, a
quarter ramp, two ramp covers,
three inter nal ramps and 10
hoistable car deck panels.
All the internal equipment will
be operated fully by electric drive
as an environment-friendly solution for operations that also avoids
problems of oil leakage and damage to cargo. The vessels will be
delivered in 2009 and onwards.
MacGregor will deliver ro-ro
equipment for the world’s two
largest ropax ferries, being built by
Aker Yards in Germany. The order from Aker Yards includes design, fabrication and installation of
800t of ro-ro equipment.
As previously reported
(WorldCargo News, December
2006, p18), Aker won the order,
worth €440M, from Stena Line for
two 62,000 gt ropax ferries, with
an option for two more, each with
an unprecedented 5500 lane-metres for trailers (up to 400) and
700m of car lanes, as well a capacity for 1200 passengers
The ships are due for delivery
in 2010 and will be built at ¨two
yards - Warnemünde (forebodies
and deck houses) and Wismar (aft
parts). They have an loa of 240m,
beam of 32m and accommodation
for 1200 passengers in 540 cabins.
Service speed is 22 knots.
Finally, in collaboration with
steel equipment manufactor
Radez, MacGregor will provide
the access equipment for two (plus
one option) 2.4m long, symmetrical, double-ended ferries being
built by Brodogradiliste Kraljevica
in Croatia for British ferry operator Wightlink.These will carry up
to 360 passengers and 65 cars at
10-12 knots across the Solent between the Isle of Wight and the
English south coast, as replacements for the existing ships.
TTS on the job
In 2007-8 the Gdynia Shipyard is
due to deliver two 2100 CEU
PCTCs to Ray Shipping with access equipment from TTS Ships
Equipment AB comprising quarter and stern ramps, internal ramps
and covers, liftable car decks, and
doors.TTS will deliver the design
and parts, and supervise the installation. Six more ships are due for
delivery to Ray Shipping in 20089, for which TTS will supply quarter and side ramps, internal ramps
and covers, liftable car decks, doors
and hatch covers.
The orders, totalling 14,000 gt
of ro-ro access equipment,
brought the number of newbuildings for which TTS is supplying equipment to Gdynia Shipyard to more than 30 and to
around 40 the new ships it has
equpped for Ray Shipping. ❏
The 62,000 gt ro-paxes will be the biggest in the world, with 5500 lanemetres for freight and 700m of car lanes
April 2007
37
Section 4
14/5/07
11:46 am
Page 38
WorldCargo
news
ROLL-ON/ROLL-OFF
The new ramp at the Mercatordok
multimodal facility was designed by
Antwerp-based Catracom
or the Maghreb and drive them
to the Italian west coast.
Intensive stuff
The intensity of European ro-ro
operations is exemplified by
DFDS Tor Line’s Eurobridge service, which provides six sailings/
week in each direction between
Gent and Gothenburg as well as a
weekly service between Brevik
and Gent (for Oslo Fjord cargoes).
The service is now operated
by three of the newly-built, 22.5
knot Flower-class ships and DFDS
Tor Line has achieved its target of
95% schedule reliability.The ships
have 3830 lane-metres and capacity on the route exceeds 125,000
trailers/year. The reliability and
frequency of Eurobridge has won
it a new cargo - steel coils from
Arcelor, used for car body panels
by Volvo and Saab in Sweden.
Previously this cargo was
moved overland, but it is now
shipped on ro-ro cassettes that are
loaded at the Mercatordok
Multimodal Terminal in Gent. To
ensure full weather protection for
this sensitive cargo, the cassettes are
loaded in the shed adjacent to the
terminal and then transferred into
the ship using TTS Liftec
translifters. In Gothenburg the
coils are transloaded from cassettes to road trailers by DFDS
Tor Line itself in the former
shipbuilding hall adjacent to the
Arendal terminal.
New quay ramp
The main cargo accessment arrangements of the Flower-class
vessels comprise fixed ramps from
the main deck to the lower hold
and upper deck, a fixed ramp from
the upper deck to the weather
deck, a hoistable ramp from the
main deck to the upper deck and
two hoistable car decks (occupying 3800 m2) serving two levels.
However, in addition, the
Eurobridge ships, MAGNOLIA, PETUNIA and PRIMULA (the first three
of the six-ship Flower-class series),
are also provided with side port
access to the car decks, in anticipation of loading cars to provide
a faster overall turnaround.
Volvo Logistics, which operates the Mercator MultiModal
Terminal, has now taken advantage of the ships’ extra loading
flexibility by installing a steel
structure ramp on the quay. Outbound sailings from Gent regularly
take 300-400 new cars for the
Scandinavian market and these no
longer have to be loaded through
the stern ramp along with trailers,
containers and other cargoes on
rolltrailers or cassettes, thus saving
time and improving safety and reducing the risk of damage.
The quayside ramp, located in
the centre of the terminal for
maximum flexibility, was designed
and installed, in a joint project
from Volvo Logistics and DFDS
Tor Line, by Antwerp-based engineering company Catracom,
which is now part of Kalmar.
The ramp, which is fixed to the
ground with bolted anchors, has
News of the world
• Dramatical cost cut for
stevedoring work
• Faster loading/unloading i.e.
reduction in turnover time.
• Flush deck which can
accommodate any type of
Ro-Ro cargo.
• The minute the tug has
positioned the trailer in its
position it has been secured.
Further information is given by Mr. Mats Johansson
www.ro-roconstruction.se
38
Address:
Indiska Oceanen
S-418 34 Gothenburg, Sweden
Telephone:+46 (0)31-54 90 16
Telefax: +46 (0)31-54 64 30
E-mail: mats.johansson@mcr.se
a maximum 8 deg slope and serves
the lower car deck. In terms of
capacity and turning radius it is
suitable for cars up toVolvo XC90
size.To prevent slippage, the driving surface has a heavy duty grating and tear plate and a stairway is
provided for the car crew.
It is folded and positioned
electro-hydraulically either automatically or manually equipped
and is also with automatic height
adjustment, based on sensors, to
compensate for changes in ship’s
draught and movements during
(un)loading operations.
Volvo Logistics is a key customer for DFDS Tor Line in both
the Eurobridge and Anglobridge
(Gothenburg-Imingham/Tilbury
services. At the start of this year
the cooperation between the two
companies was renewed for two
more years, with an option to extend it to the end of 2011.
Kiel haul
TTS Port equipment AB has carried out repairs to the ro-ro ramp
at the Port of Kiel, which serves
Stena Line Scandinavia, with zero
downtime to nor mal operations.The ramp was designed for
the ro-paxes SCANDINAVIA and
GERMANICA that operate between
Gothenburg and Kiel.
A protruding ramp knuckle
presented an obstacle to trailers
and they were being scraped underneath as they passed over it.
Flow of traffic over the ramp was
impeded, causing delay.
TTS recommended changing
the transition angles for the trailers by lowering the ramp and
making other alterations to the
ramp’s geometry to improve traffic flow. The modifications have
halved unloading time. TTS also
installed a new support structure
for the passenger gangway on the
vessels’ shell, to improve safety.
More trestles
TTS also recently signed a contract with Gothenburg-based
TranLumi Line for 150 trailer trestles.The IPSI clip on trailer (COT)
type trestle will serve the route
from Ajos/Oulo in northern Finland to Travemünde in Germany.
Existing customers for this
type of trestle include Transfennica
in Finland and Colorline in Norway. The COT trestles have also
been deployed in the terminal
handling system for Foodtankers
in Karlshamm, Sweden.
TTS had already supplied the
cargo access equipment for Transatlantic’s three dedicated con-ros
TRANSPAPER , TRANSPULP and
TRANSTIMBER that Transatlantic’s
affiliate Translumi operates under
long-term charter to StoraEnso
for the shipper’s NETSS 2 (northern Finland) SECU programme.
The programme was recently
completed with the delivery of the
third ship (TRANSTIMBER) and the
conversion of exports to Germany
to SECUs over Lübeck. The vessels are discharged at Lübeck’s
Nordlandkai terminal.
The triangular service calls
Kemi/Oulu, Gothenburg and
Lübeck. 60% of the capacity is
used for StoraEnso base cargo on
the inbound leg to Germany and
the remaining 40% for third party
trucks, trailers and containers.
Lübecker Hafen Gesellschaft
(LHG) has installed a cross-dock
f acility at Nordlandkai to
transload the paper and board
products directly from SECUs
to rail cars, while product for
temporary storage in the port
is transferred to another warehouse. LHG has invested more
than €5M to handle the SECU
business, including LTH90
translifters from TTS-Liftec and
four heavy duty MT45 ro-ro
tractors from Mafi.
More know-how
Finally, in an important development, TTS Port Equipment AB
has signed a contract with Scotland-based engineering and construction specialist, Marine Development Ltd (MDL) in an agreement to take over the total of its
know-how and expertise. As part
of the agreement, John Rose, the
former owner of MDL, will join
TTS on a consultancy basis.
MDL originally patented the
semi-submersible linkspan and has
a long and proven record of providing flexible, safe and economic
means for the transfer of ro-ro cargoes.To date, some 60 linkspans and
passenger gangways have been designed and supplied. ❏
Russians step up
the pace on cars
A special commission headed
by Russia’s minister for economic development German
Gref has authorised a support
package of R2.14B (US$78M)
towards the construction of
the planned Yug-2 multi-purpose cargo terminal in the
Port of Ust-Luga.
As previously reported, the terminal, with a slated capacity for
4.5 mtpa, is one of several to be
developed by Ust-Luga Company
(KUL) and total construction cost
is estimated at R8.4B (US$300M),
mostly to be financed by own resources and commercial loans, according to KUL’s spokeswoman
Tatyana Pauk. Last year KUL issued debentures valued at R600M,
underwr itten by the Saint
Petersburg regional government.
TheYug-2 project covers more
than 100 hectares not counting
road and rail approaches and is due
to be completed in the next three
years. KUL’s deputy director general Aleksandr Goloviznin has previously indicated that imports of
new cars and containerised parts
for Russia’s growing car assembly
plant business are key targets.
First car carrier
The first car carrier is expected
to call in November or Decem-
ber this year, when phase one of
the project occuping 25 hectares
of land and having a capacity for
60,000 cars/year comes on stream.
Capacity is forecast to reach
360,000 cars/year by 2010. KUL
has signed a co-operation agreement with RailTransAuto (RTA),
a new joint venture of Russian
Railways (RZD) and TransGroup
AS (TGAS), Russia’s third largest
rail forwarder (see below).
Sixth car terminal
KUL is the sixth company in Baltic Russia to declare plans to develop ro-ro facilities aimed largely
at imports of new and used cars,
after Oslo Marine Group (OMG)
in Saint Petersburg, Arktur Travel,
RosEuroTrans, Russian Transport
Lines (see WorldCargo News, December 2006, pp23-24) and
TGAS, which is co-developing a
ter minal at Cher nyakhovsk,
Kaliningrad region. Designed to
handle 100,000 automobiles/year,
the terminal handled 2500 cars
late last year when its was commissioned and is set to handle
20,000 this year.
Handling and storage rates for
new cars over Russian ports are
attractive at US$20/CEU and
US$10/CEU respectively.Around
340,000 new cars/year, or 75% of
April 2007
WorldCargo
news
ROLL-ON/ROLL-OFF
current new car imports worth
US$6B, are currently moved overland from the Finnish ports of
Hanko,Turku and Kotka. Russia’s
import volumes are forecast to
increase by 20-30% annually at
least until 2010, by when largescale assembly production in Russia is expected to reach as much
as 1.5M cars/year.
OMG’s plans are the most advanced and in February it obtained approval to build a new roro berth in Saint Petersburg. This
is estimated to cost US$10M out
of a total project cost of
US$100M.As previously reported,
OMG has already laid on open
parking for 600 cars and rebuilt
two sheds for covered storage at
its new Onega terminal, and in
December handled its first shipment - 606 UK-built Nissan cars
shipped to Saint Petersburg on
NECKAR HIGHWAY.
Pending completion of its own
quay, ships have to dock at one of
the six adjacent berths operated
by Saint Petersburg Fishing Port.
Car carriers have been making
fortnightly calls with shipments of
650-750 cars and in the first quarter of this year Onega handled
5450 Nissan automobiles.
Frequency is now weekly and
the terminal is expected to handle 60,000 cars on an annualised
basis. “If we manage to start construction of the new berth this
year, then by the end of 2008
Onega will be able to receive up
to two ships a day,” said OMG’s
manager Vitaliy Arkhangelsky.
Coupled with two 6-storey
garages to be added under the
project’s final stage, Onega will be
able to handle 120-150,000 cars/
year. In addition, Nissan has signed
a contract with Frans Maas for
delivery of car assembly units from
Amsterdam to Russia, so Onega
will be equipped to handle containers on mafis and as lo-lo cargo.
Nissan sold 47,000 cars in
Russia in 2006 but is now shipping 10,000 cars/month into this
growing market. Prior to Onega
opening, the cars were shipped
over the Finnish Port of Hanko.
Less expensive
The “selling point” for Russia (and
for Silport in Sillamae, Estonia) is
that Finnish terminals are reaching capacity and the road border
crossing with Russia is saturated,
with the results that shipments can
be delayed for hours. Furthermore,
the strike record in Finnish ports
has been getting worse.
It is claimed that the high costs
Importing via Finland means that
Russian motorists are paying an extra
US$500M/year for their cars, claim
Russian port interests
of importing via Finland means
that Russian motorists are paying an extra US$500M/year for
new cars and, with the market
growing so fast (by 30% this year
alone, according to Sergey Petrov
of Rolf Logistics, Russia’s largest
car importer), local facilities are
sorely needed.
Furthermore, they will be
needed for exports as much as
imports because car assembly in
Russia is also booming. Nissan
Manufacturing Russia is, says its
managing director Fujio Hosaka,
investing US$200M in 2006-2009
to build a new assembly plant in
the outskirts of Vyborg, some 130
kms north west of Saint
Petersburg, with a final capacity
for up to 150,000 units/year.
Ford and Toyota are about to
increase capacity of their
Vsevolozhsk and Shushary assembly plants from 72,000 to 150,000
and from 20,000 to 200-300,000
units/year respectively. Due to capacity constraints at the Port of
Saint Petersburg, Ford has announced that it will redirect the
logistics stream to Ust-Luga. The
Yug-2 site has also been checked
out by Mitsubishi Motors.
Meanwhile, GM has upscaled
its Shushary car plant, due to be
commissioned next year, from
25,000 to 70,000 automobiles a
year. GM Europe’s president CarlPeter Forster said the decision was
dictated by the soaring demand for
Chevrolets in Russia and Europe.
And DaimlerChrysler is planning
to assemble Mercedes cars in the
Saint Petersburg area.
Pacific view
cus for cars and car parts, there are
increasing signs that Japanese and
Korean car makers are targeting
Russian Pacific Seaboard (RFE).
Last November, TGAS launched
phase one of a new car import
terminal at the Port of Saint Trinity Bay (formerly known as the
Port of Zarubino), the southernmost harbour in the RFE.
The facility is currently handling 2000-4000 cars/month,
and volume is expected to rise
to 10,000 cars/month. Absorption of just 20% of present day
ocean shipments of Japanese and
South Korean cars could bring
RTA up to US$150M in carriage payments. Granting the
import terminals free port status would also contribute to
eliminating red tape.
Three-fold increase
Toyota is building an assembly
plant in the RFE and, meanwhile, imports of new and used
cars through Vladivostok have
grown almost 3-fold in the past
five years to reach 250,000 units
last year.
Berths Nos. 3 and 4 have been
converted into a dedicated automobile terminal, which also ca-
ters for heavy, rolling construction
equipment such as Hitachi dump
trucks, Komatsu bulldozers,
Daewoo excavators and Kato
mobile cranes.
New garages
Port operator VMTP (Vladivostock Commercial Seaport) has
built a five-storey and a 10-storey
garage, as well as a new open car
park with aggregate storage capacity for 1600 cars. Based on average dwell time of seven days, capacity at Berths 3/4 has risen
to 112,000 units/year. New rail
approaches have been installed and
berthing facilities for large ro-ros
have been improved.
In a further boost for the port’s
credentials with leading Asian car
makers, Russian Railways is to
build a new intermodal container
terminal for operation by Russian
Troika, its joint venture with Fesco
Transport Group.
As previously reported,Troika
cur rently operates three
intermodal services over the port
of Nakhodka - to Taganrog, for
the Hyundai car assembly plant,
2-3 times/week; to Izhevsk, for
the KIA car assembly plant),
twice/week; and to Moscow, for
LG consumer goods, once a week.
According to Troika’s director
general Vladimir Chisnakov, the
new inter modal platfor m at
Vladivostock will provide these
key shippers with a dedicated delivery channel linking the sea and
rail route segments in a single procurement chain.
Construction of the US$80M
terminal is planned to start in the
third quarter of this year, with the
120.000 TEu/year capacity phase
one launch scheduled for 2010.
Phase two will be put in operation in 2011 and throughput is
expected to reach 250,000 TEU/
year in 2014.
Ro-rail joint venture
Finally, as noted earlier, RTA is a
new joint venture of RZD (51%)
and TGAS (49%). TGAS transported around 161,000 motor cars
last year and is budgeting for
327,000 units this year. RTA is
based on the premise that it will
benefit from a competitive rate
policy, purpose-built car carrier
wagons and dedicated paths for
fast trains running from seaports
to inland terminals, to ensure
timely and safe delivery of automobiles to dealers.
Damage during rail transport
has been a major issue and car
shippers have complained that it
is almost impossible to prove
RZD’s liability to underwriters.
RZD and TGAS control 51% and
49% in the new company respectively. The chairman is Salman
Babayev (an RZD vice president)
and TGAS’s chairman Maksim
Liksutov is vice-chairman.
Initially the fleet will include
1583 dedicated boxcars able to
transport 10 CEU, with the goal
of growing the fleet to 5000 and
10,500 by 2010 and 2012 respectively. This year alone 1000
autocarriers worth US$100,000
each (or US$100M totally) will be
acquired from Germany’s Fahrzeugtechnik Dessau AG, able to
transport 16 CEU.
RTA expects to transport
400,000 cars this year, 890,000 in
2008, 1M in 2009 and 1.7M in
2012.This would account for 75%
of Russia’s car transports by rail
and at least 25% of the overall
market for car transport.
This means that RTA is targeting “short haul” destinations (ie
defined as a haul of less than 2000
kms from the seaport of import
or Russian car plant), from which
rail is totally absent at present. ❏
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Section 3
14/5/07
11:21 am
Page 41
WorldCargo
news
INTERMODAL
Lorry-Rail enters the combi-field
Marseille project
The Port of Marseilles Authority
(PAM) has announced plans to install a terminal at its southern roro ter minal (TRS Ter minal
Roulier Sud), where ro-ro services for Morocco and Tunisia are
handled. PAM’s prognosis is that
an average of 60,000 trailers/year
could be shipped over the port by
rail. It will present technical and
financial proposals before the end
of this year, in conjunction with
Lohr Industrie and Marseille
Manu-tention, the company that
operates TRS.
TVH - GROUP THERMOTE & VANHALST
BRABANTSTRAAT 15 • 8790 WAREGEM • BELGIUM
TEL +32 56 43 42 11 • FAX +32 56 43 44 88 • E-MAIL info@tvh.be • WEB www.tvh.be
3
an
rt
pa
s n et. M ore t
h
The sideloader specialist
0 y e ar s e xp er
ie
No.1
in
sold
w
o
N
es
untri
80 co
id e
April 2007
The terminals in Bettembourg
and Le Boulou have the same layout. Using a shunt loco the train
is split into two equal parts of 10
Modalohr wagons and there are
chevron slots for up to 109 trailers, aligned with the angles of the
load beds when they pivot out
from the wagon centre lines.
Trailer jockeys (un)load the
train, using simple mobile ramps
as dock levellers.This is much less
expensive than running the rail
track in a trench. Of course the
road tractor can also be used to
(un)load the trailer if required.
The Modalohr system has its
critics.The wagons are heavy and
the trains have a high deadweight
to liveweight ratio, even allowing
for the intended Lorry-Rail practice of moving unaccompanied
trailers, as distinct from the relatively short Alpine route where
some operators prefer to ship the
complete HGV, similar to the conventional Alpine RoLa services.
With their pivoting load beds
and movable side frames, the wagons are complex structures and
inevitably this entails relatively
high maintenance costs. However,
they are not as expensive to run
as “classic” RoLa wagons, whose
small wheels have high wear costs.
On the “plus” side, as
Modalohr is a horizontal, or roro system, the terminal infrastructure costs are relatively low.There
is no need for expensive handling
equipment, or the high civil en-
All parts, All makes
ith w orld w
They can also benefit from 4t
higher payloads, as they will be authorised to operate at up to 44t
all-up weight for origin/destination points within 150 kms radius
of either of the terminals.
The one-way tariff, depending
on load and frequency of use, will
Irún) with Bordeaux and the
southern part of the Paris region.
Preparation works are costed at
€170M and they have moved up
the “pecking order” in the proposals for public expenditures in
the next two years or so. ❏
ew
Higher load factors
4.03m high trailers, thanks to
clearance work in Mont-Cenis,
greatly extending its appeal.
Furthermore, an “Atlantic Pyrenees” service is planned, to link
Bayonne in south western France
(close to the Spanish border at
nc
While this service is limited by
restricted tunnel clearances to tank
trailers and road tankers, LorryRail will cater for semi-trailers
with a corner height of 4.03m and
width of 2.55m (2.6m for reefer/
insulated trailer), according to
UIC 506 (GB1 gauge).
This is the smallest possible
structure gauge in which it is technically possible to transport a 4m
high trailer, meaning that the system can be used on the principal
rail axes in France.
The transit time of 14h 30m
between the Bettembourg and Le
Boulou terminals is highly competitive, as road transport can take
anything between 17 and 22h depending on the level of congestion.The service will also operate
on a 7/7 basis, enabling transport
operators to get round weekend
restrictions on HGVs.
Simple terminals
gineering costs associated with
ground support and paving to
cope with crane rails or the axle
loads of mobile handling plant.
Much has been made of the
potential for various horizontal
rail-road transport systems, but the
bottom line is that at present only
Modalohr is a reality and the
French are clearly going to back
it and use it to put some beef back
into combined transport.
Even FNTR, the French road
hauliers’ organisation, has welcomed Lorry-Rail as a way of decongesting the A7 motorway and
providing a competitive alternative for its members. There are
plans to branch the service over
Avignon and the industrial and
port poles of Marseille, which will
provide a potential rail capture for
ro-ro traffic in the Mediterranean.
re
GB1 gauge
be between €900 and €1000, or
about 10% less than the average
cost of road transport on the A7
motorway corridor.
Access to the service is simple
and transparent. It is necessary
only to book a slot (or slots) by
the cut-off time (in the case of a
southbound departure, this is
15.00h). On arrival the trailer is
given a safety check and the truck
driver is allocated a parking slot.
This gives operators a chance to
optimise the transport chain by
dropping one trailer off and picking another one up.
Each Lorry-Rail train will be
made up of 20 Modalohr double
wagons (ie 40 trailer) and will be
680m long, including loco.All the
wagons will be fitted with GPS
tags, allowing the transport operator to follow his consignment in
real-time in the same way as he
can now do with road transport.
To start there will be one daily
departure, but extra and longer
train sets can be added as demand
picks up. Initially it is thought that
traffic will rise quickly to 30,000
shipments on an annualised basis,
but could eventually rise to as
much as 300,000/year.
e a nd spa
The new service will be operated
by Lorry-Rail SA that, as previously reported in WorldCargo News,
is a joint venture of Caisse des
Dépôts et Consignations, with
42.6%,Vinci Concessions (Autoroutes du Sud de France, Escota,
Cofiroute), with 19.9%, French
and Luxembourg Railways
(SNCF and CFL) and Modalohr,
each with 12.5%. It is run by
Nicolas Welsch.
The cost of setting up the new
service is relatively modest at
€56M, most of which (€36M) has
been provided by the state,
(through network manager
Réseau Ferré de France) to modernise the rail route and provide
the structure gauge. This has
mostly been achieved by repositioning point boxes and groundbased signalling equipment to provide sufficient clearance under the
wagon floors.
The rest of the funding has
come from the Lorry-Rail consortium, with the bulk of it
(€17M) going on 45 Modalohr
wagons. This pivoting centre, low
bed, double wagon was developed
by Lohr Industrie several years ago
and has already been in service for
two years between Aiton (Lyon)
and Orbassano (Torino).
The first train arrived a few minutes ahead of schedule in Le Boulou (Perpignan)
The red lines denote existing services (Perpignan-Bettembourg starts commercially
in July). Blue route plans are advanced and the green links are under study
r v ic
Consortium
Links to Paris and Lille are also
planned, along with a steel wheel
interchange over the facility serving Lyon (it would have to be enlarged). All this could be in place
by 2010. A link to Lille (Dourges)
could in turn provide a stage for
onward services to London, via
the Channel tunnel and the
CTRL, although tariff issues and
access problems would have to be
resolved first. As of 2008, meanwhile, the Lyon-Torino service
will also be open for normal,
se
A new autoroute ferroviaire (rail
motorway) service will start
commercial operations this
July between Bettembourg, in
Luxembourg and PerpignanLe Boulou, near the FrancoSpanish border - a rail distance of 1060 kms.
The first of a series of technical trials and test runs slated to run
until July was carried out last
month, with the first departure
being marked by a ceremony attended by French transport minister Dominique Perben and his
Luxembourg counterpart Lucien
Lux. The first trial consist left
Bettembourg at 17.30h on 29
March and arrived at Le Boulou
five minutes ahead of schedule at
08.00h the next morning.
Schedule integrity is an important message for Lorry-Rail to get
across. Denis Petitmengin, the director of SNCF Fret’s combidaughter Novatrans, said in January that on average one of the 38
dail combi-trains operated by his
company is subject to severe delay, for reasons beyond its control.
Hammar Maskin AB, Sweden
Tel: (+46) 33 29 00 00
Fax: (+46) 33 29 00 01
E-mail: hammar@hammarmaskin.se
Website: www.hammarmaskin.se
41
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WorldCargo
news
CONTAINER INDUSTRY
Private moves and public gestures
As reported on page 1 of this issue, the Interpool Board of Directors has unanimously approved
a deal that would see the world’s
sixth largest container lessor, with
a fleet of around 760,000 TEU,
acquired by private equity funds
managed by affiliates of Fortress
Investment Group LLC.
The deal, which would see
Interpool delist from the New
York Stock Exchange, is valued at
US$2.4B, or US$27.10 per share,
including assumed debt.
Meanwhile, Cronos, which
ranks ninth in the leasing company league table with a fleet of
440,000 TEU, is planning to come
off the NASDAQ exchange
through a management-led
buyout supported by FB Transportation, an affiliate of Fortis Merchant Banking, in a deal valued at
US$133.7M, or US$16 per share.
Two of the world’s largest container lessors are going
private, while two more are set to be listed
have built into Interpool over
many years, and along with the rest
of our Board, I am supportive of
this transaction,” he said.
Subject to shareholder approval and the usual closing conditions, both the Cronos and
Interpool transactions are expected complete in the third quarter of this year.
But while Cronos’s independence now seems assured, speculation is growing that another
merger could be the natural outcome of Fortress Investment’s
move for Interpool.
In early 2006, Fortress took
over reefer leasing specialist Carlisle Leasing and one of its first
moves was to launch the company
into the dry freight box leasing
arena.Assuming the Interpool deal
goes through, a merger of Carlisle
and Interpool would be logical, all
the more so in the wake of the
parting of the ways last year of
Interpool and its former 50%
owned affiliate Container Applications International (CAI).
Interpool bought into CAI in
1998, primarily as it needed a
means of remarketing containers
coming off term lease. In early
2006, Interpool sold 273,200
standard boxes (around 400,000
TEU) representing over 70% of
its operating lease fleet and most
of the containers managed on its
behalf by CAI to P&R Equipment
Finance Corp, a newly formed
subsidiary of German container
investment scheme manager
Pfeiffer & Roth.
Last October, CAI repurchased
Inter pool’s 50% interest for
US$40M in cash and a four-year
US$37.5M note and though
Interpool has an option to continue to use CAI as a container
manager, commentators say it may
make better sense to use Carlisle
for that purpose if both end up in
the same stable.
Textainer on top
diately prior to the company’s absorption of the Gateway fleet, but
is rising again as an increased
number of former Gateway containers are converted from shortterm to leases of longer duration.
The 32% of the fleet assigned
to master lease thus remains in decline, with an ever-growing share
tied to the company’s own version of “hybrid” master lease, serving intra-Asia and other more localised sectors. ❏
Merger moves?
Interestingly, it was Netherlandsbased Fortis, which already has a
close relationship with Cronos
through the CF Leasing joint
venture container acquisition
programme, that was behind an
earlier buyout offer for Interpool
proposed by Interpool chairman
and CEO Martin Tuchman, at
US$24 per share. Not surprisingly,
the move prompted speculation
that a merger between Interpool
and Cronos could be on the cards.
In the event, a Special Committee of Independent Directors,
set up to review Tuchman’s proposal, solicited competing offers
for Interpool and Fortress came
up with a better deal, which
Tuchman immediately got behind.
“All along our goal has been to
achieve the best possible result for
all Interpool stockholders. The
transaction proposed by
Fortress…captures the value we
Regardless of whether or not it
proceeds with an IPO, Textainer
Group, now ranked as the world’s
largest lessor in TEU terms, has
started 2007 on an upbeat note
following the placing of a substantial run of new box orders.
The Textainer fleet was boosted
to over 1.5M TEU in the wake of
its management takeover of the
Gateway fleet in July 2006, which
represented a new high and distanced the company from its nearest competitor,Triton Container, by
over 100,000 TEU. Textainer currently controls around 15% of all
containers on operating lease and
an even greater share of the standard dry freight component.
In addition to the 315,000 TEU
acquired from Gateway, Textainer
purchased 95,000 TEU of dry
freight newbuilds in 2006, including 26,000 TEU during November/December, when demand
took a turn for the better.This was
followed by orders for a further
19,500 TEU for delivery in January 2007 and almost 12,000 TEU
each for February and March.
The combined first quarter
delivery comprised 20,500 x 20ft,
10,200 x 40ft high cube and just
1200 x 40ft (8ft 6in) standard units.
The production split in 2006 was
similar, as it divided to give 45,000
x 20ft, over 20,000 x 40ft high
cubes and 4,800 x 40ft standards.
The company’s overall purchase for the coming year is now
expected to top its output in 2006,
with 20ft and 40ft high cubes
again accounting for the vast majority of deliveries.
Textainer’s planned disposal of
April 2007
equipment in 2007 will also likely
be comparable to 2006, when almost 90,000 TEU were cleared
from its fleet and traded through
its dedicated secondary sales division. In line with most of its competitors, Textainer has been keen
to take advantage of the continued strength of used box prices,
which are still close to US$900 per
20ft and over US$1100 per 40ft
at many locations.
Newbuild prices have also recovered in recent months to hold
at around US$2000 per 20ft
throughout the opening quarter
of 2007. This has, in turn, forced
the average 20ft per diem back towards US$0.70, although the initial cash return on investment remains at an historic low.
Textainer’s stronger investment
was prompted by a much improved uptake of equipment from
late 2006, and the company reported over 58,000 TEU (including new and depot units) fixed on
lease during the opening two
months of 2007. This compared
with just 12,500 TEU on-hired
during the corresponding period
of 2006, when the market was far
weaker and lease rates were last at
rock bottom.
Utilisation has also strengthened again in recent months and
stood at around 92% in February/
March 2007.This was close to the
industry average, and increased to
94% when all new equipment,
pending delivery, was excluded.
The proportion of Textainer’s
fleet fixed on long-term lease is currently put at 60%, which is down
on the situation a year ago, imme-
Going public
Perhaps mindful that it may not
be able to rely on Interpool as a
provider of managed equipment
in the longer term, CAI (now reincorporated under the name CAI
International) filed a Form S1
Registration Statement with the
Securities and Exchange Commission on March 21 this year as
a prelude to an Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the New York
Stock Exchange (NYSE).
Currently the world’s seventh
largest container lessor with a fleet
of around 675,000 TEU, CAI
plans to use the proceeds of the
IPO to repay the US$37.5M converted subordinated note issued to
Interpool, a US$17.5M term loan
outstanding under its senior secured credit facility and other indebtedness in order to increase its
borrowing capacity to fund future
fleet acquisitions.
Details of the volume of shares
to be offered are not known, but
CAI founder Hiro Ogawa, who
sold a 14.9% interest in CAI in
February this year to an entity affiliated with the Development
Bank of Japan, will remain the
majority shareholder in the company after the IPO.
“We plan to increase both the
number of owned containers as
well as the number of managed
containers in our fleet. As a result
of this offering, and the resulting
incremental borrowing capacity
under our senior secured credit
facility, we expect to purchase approximately US$150-200M of
new containers in 2007. We believe it is important to maintain a
balance between the size of our
owned fleet and our managed fleet
to preserve our strength of having multiple sources of revenue,”
CAI said in its registration statement.
Value enhancement
An even bigger fish - Textainer,
the world's largest lessor with a
fleet of over 1.5M TEU - is also
considering an IPO. Announcing
its 2006 results, Neil Jowell, chairman of Textainer’s parent company, South Africa-based Trencor,
said,“Investigations into value enhancement initiatives at the op-
erational level indicated that an
appropriate opportunity may be
the listing of Textainer on an international stock exchange.”
Though no announcement to
that effect had been made at the
time of writing, an IPO was said
to be more likely than not.
Observers say that any such
move would be welcomed by
listed TAL International. While
both Interpool and Cronos have
both been “thinly traded,” having
two more strongly traded companies on the NYSE would provide
analysts with a better means of
comparing performance in the
container leasing sector. ❏
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43
WorldCargo
news
TANK CONTAINERS
Tank lessors fill their orderbooks
Tank container leasing companies
are buoyed by the fact that the
high demand for tank containers
they reported 12 months ago has
continued into 2007 and shows no
sign of abating. The strong market is reflected in the 90% plus
fleet utilisation rates that most lessors are achieving. Healthy world
trade and the rapid growth of the
Chinese and other Asian economies are underpinning the demand for tanks.
Despite high newbuild prices and long lead times, the strong demand for
tank containers is prompting lessors to book orders for new units into 2008
The downside for tank lessors
is that the price of a newbuild tank
container has shot up by over 25%
in the last 12 months while lease
rates remain under pressure and
margins tight. In early 2006, a
standard IMO 1/T11 portable
tank could be ordered for approximately US$22,000. Twelve
months later that figure had leapt
up to US$29,000.
Now, with summer approaching and tank manufacturers quoting lead times of up to eight
months for a new tank container,
the cost of a new unit continues
to r ise and is approaching
US$30,000, the highest ever paid
ancillary revenue than term leases.
The spread of the tank container market into new regions
and the wide range of players involved in the market, along with
their varying needs, means that the
flexible master lease arrangement
has been gaining in popularity in
recent years.
Master leases entail more work
for lessors but the majority of
companies now employ sophisticated software packages to harness
computer power in the smooth
running of master lease arrangements.The IT packages bring the
added benefit of being able to
monitor the real-time status and
location of individual units.
Strength in numbers
Strong performances globally in all product lines meant a record utilisation for
the EXSIF Worldwide fleet in 2006
for a standard tank. The rising
price of stainless steel and the difficulties faced by tank manufacturers in securing sufficient raw
materials are helping to push up
tank costs and delivery times.
At the same time, lessors have
had to contend with higher operating costs, strengthening interest
rates and revenues in dollars - a currency that has been depreciating
against most others in recent years.
Tough choice
In this new set of market conditions, lessors are left with a difficult
choice. They can either book as
many newbuild slots as they can
now, and hope that lease rates will
strengthen enough to provide a
suitable return on investment, or
pass up on any newbuilding opportunities that might arise and risk
disappointing customers, losing
market share and having to pay
even higher tank newbuild prices
next year.
The bottom line is that most
lessors are prepared to take the risk
and are ordering as many tanks as
they can. In some cases that is not
enough; lessors would like to order more tanks but the limited
availability of newbuild slots - especially at CIMC, Welfit Oddy
and Singamas, the only manufacturers capable of building more
than 1,500 standard tanks per annum - has forced them to curtail
their fleet expansion plans.
A major supplier of freight
containers, Singamas has just
launched its tank manufacturing
division (see news pages), thus
opening up an important new
source of tanks for the industry. It
is likely that tank output at
Singamas will rise quickly but,
here again, the builder will be subject to the same material shortages as the other manufacturers.
For lessors, an important advantage of new tanks is the higher
lease rates they are able to obtain
for such units compared to older
tanks. Some sources point out that
the high demand for new tanks is
supporting rates of US$13.50 per
day, as opposed to US$8.50 per
day for older tanks fixed on standard term leases, typically three to
five years.
Stronger revenues
In general, lessors have been keen
in recent years to build up their
direct financing lease business.
Requiring relatively low levels of
customer service, direct financing
leases are usually long-term in
nature, typically ranging from
three to seven years, and call for
customers to make fixed payments
over the agreed period. The customer is provided with an option
to purchase the tank container at
the end of the lease term and, because per diem rates include an element of repayment of capital,
they are higher than rates charged
under operating term leases.
Tank container operators are
increasingly making use of the
direct finance lease option as they
exercise the right to purchase and
build up their owned fleets of
tanks.Although lessors are anxious
to meet their needs, to provide
customers with the tanks they require under such arrangements,
they must secure as many tanks as
they can get their hands on. As
mentioned, the lack of newbuild
slot availability at the tank manufacturing plants means that lessors
are unable to order as many tanks
as they would like.
Flexible masters
The other service option available
from lessors is the master lease arrangement. Due to their flexible
nature master leases command
higher per diem rates than term
leases but the yields are still below the daily direct financing lease
rates. Under master leases, which
are generally negotiated or renewed annually, customers are able
to pick up and drop off containers where and when needed, subject to restrictions and availability,
on pre-agreed terms.
Master leases also define the
number of containers that may be
returned within each calendar
month, the permitted return locations and applicable drop-off
charges. Also, the charges associated with pick-up, drop-off, handling and off-hire operations mean
that master leases generate more
44
The mix of tank container equipment held under master, term and
direct financing leases varies from
lessor to lessor.
The lease rates themselves will
depend on a number of factors
besides market conditions and the
lease type and term, including
customer credit rating, equipment
type, age and replacement cost,
interest rates and maintenance requirements.
In general, those tank container lessors currently enjoying
greatest success in meeting the
needs of an increasingly diversified market are those who have
made a global commitment, in
terms of infrastructure and fleet
size and diversity, and are able to
back this up with the necessary
financial resources.
Additionally, the favoured lessor is the one offering a high degree of flexibility and the ability
to meet varying customer needs
in terms of lease structures, rates,
pick-up and drop-off locations
and tank container availability.
In terms of overall fleet size,
EXSIF Worldwide, with over
34,000 tanks, and Eurotainer, with
20,000-plus, operate the largest lessor fleets and are optimally placed
to meet the full range of customer
requirements. However, a range of
mid-size lessors, including Trifleet,
GE SeaCo and Cronos, operate
global networks and continue to refine and improve them to meet industry’s increasing demands.
Utilisation record
The EXSIF fleet now stands at
34,900 tanks, following the acquisition of 2,400 new units in 2006
and the disposal of 380. Furthermore, the manager of the world’s
largest leased fleet of tank containers reports that it has managed to
book large blocks of newbuilding
slots for this year, with the end
result that 2,700 further new tanks
will be added in 2007. The new
stock comprises a mix of gas,
swaps, specials, offshore and standard tank containers.
EXSIF achieved a record utilisation for its fleet in 2006 as a
result of strong performances globally in all product lines.The momentum generated during the
year has been carried over into
2007 and the lessor is confident
that the current double digit
growth in demand for tanks will
be maintained.
Like all tank lessors, EXSIF is
having to cope with the twin
challenges of continued pressure
on rates and the reduced availability of tanks, which are increasing in price, although the company notes that an upward correction in lease rates is now, finally, becoming evident.
Newbuild trail
The net effect of the addition of
500 new tanks to its fleet in 2006
and the disposal of 50 units is that
the GE SeaCo tank fleet now
stands at 8,300.There is no let-up
in the London-based lessor’s
newbuilding activities, as 750 new
tanks will be added in 2007. Long
April 2007
WorldCargo
news
TANK CONTAINERS
lead times mean that the majority of these
units have already been ordered.
GE SeaCo has implemented a new SAP
computer operating system over the past
year, providing the capability to manage,
organisation-wide, a full range of activities, including financial, asset and cost accounting, operations, personnel, equipment,
online documentation and archived documents.The package also incorporates customer relationship and supply chain management.
Over the past year GE SeaCo has been
distancing itself from Sea Containers, one
of its shareholders, which has filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the
US while it implements a financial restructuring programme. GE Capital, the
other major shareholder, has enquired
about purchasing Sea Containers’ stake in
GE SeaCo but without success, as yet. GE
SeaCo is self-funded, operated as an independent company and will shortly be
moving its headquarters from offices
rented in the Sea Containers building on
the River Thames to new premises at
London Bridge.
the present booming transport market
cools down. Of course, the flipside of the
coin is that this evolving market scenario
will offer opportunities to those parties
ready and willing to take advantage of
them.”
Cronos upward spiral
One of the fast-growing tank leasing
fleets, in relative terms, in recent years has
been that of Cronos. In the space of three
years the Cronos tank fleet has doubled
in size to 6,500 units, including 1,500 new
tanks added in 2006 alone. Investments
in new tanks topped US$30M for the
second year running last year.The Cronos
tank focus is on standard, 20ft IMO 1/
T11 portable tanks.
Cronos is active in the leasing of dry
freight, tank, refrigerated and other spe-
cial intermodal containers, with an owned
and managed fleet of over 440,000 TEU.
The lessor increased its overall fleet utilisation to 92.1 per cent at the end of 2006,
up from 90.8 per cent a year earlier. The
investment emphasis in recent years has
been on tanks, reefers and other specials.
The company was prepared for another aggressive tank newbuilding programme in 2007, and there will no doubt
be numerous additions. However, the current inability of tank manufacturers to
meet the high worldwide demand with
enough new tanks quickly enough means
that the number of new tanks joining the
Cronos fleet this year will fall somewhat
short of management’s aspirations. ❏
With the 500 new units added in 2006,
Trifleet now has 9,000 tanks in its fleet
Girard Equipment, Inc.
Trifleet grows
Despite the influx of 500 new tanks in
2006, boosting its total fleet size to 9,000
units, Trifleet Leasing still managed to
boost average fleet utilisation, calculated
on the basis of paid rental days, by 6%
during the course of the year.
“We experienced a very strong market demand for our services worldwide
last year,” states Philip van Rooijen,
Trifleet’s managing director. “Although
the US market slowed during the summer, picking up again slightly at the end
of the year, European and Asian customers continued to show a high interest in
leasing tank containers. One exception,
however, has been the demand for gas
tanks which sharply declined during 2006,
with major companies offhiring most of
their tanks of older design.”
Last year was eventful in other ways for
Trifleet. After intensive discussions with
majority shareholder ING Lease, a management buyout (MBO) was effected in
October 2006, with support from investors in tank containers managed by the
company and several financial institutions.
As a result of the transaction the management team, led by van Rooijen, acquired
the majority of the shares in the company.
After taking into account corrections
relating to the MBO, Trifleet achieved
normalised gross revenues of €23.5M in
2006. Looking to the year ahead, the lessor anticipates continued strong demand
for its services. However, Trifleet is being less aggressive on the tank container
newbuilding front than some of its competitors. “In view of the fact that leasing
rates have still not picked up to a level
that reflects the current increased cost
of a new tank container, we have reduced
the inflow of new tank containers to approximately 150 for 2007,” explains van
Rooijen.
“Going forward, we are reacting to
meet changing customer needs in various
ways. In response to the ever-increasing
requirement for fast, electronic information, Trifleet Leasing provides its customers worldwide with access to real-time information on leased tanks and contracts
through a modern extranet service.We are
also adapting our operation to cope with
the increasing number of enquiries for special tanks that leasing companies are now
receiving.This business is posing challenges
to lessors, as the remarketability of specials
is generally lower.”
Fresh challenge
The major challenge for all tank container
lessors is to achieve returns that justify
further investment. The fact that the recent rapid escalation in the price of a new
tank has not been matched by upward
pressure on rates to anywhere near the
same extent makes the challenge that
much greater. Furthermore, lessors are
facing competition not only from fellow
leasing companies, but also, increasingly,
some of the major tank operators who
are currently investing heavily in orders
for new tanks.
“We believe that one outcome of the
current high-demand, competitive market is increasing pressure for further consolidation in the tank leasing sector,”
concludes van Rooijen,“especially when
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45
WorldCargo
news
TANK CONTAINERS
Tank repair - time to speak
a common language?
Would a common approach to repair estimate coding
bring benefits to the tank container industry as it has
already done for the dry freight sector?
container community, helping to
automate the transfer and authorisation of repair estimates and reducing duplication of data entry
and human errors.
Because container owners
now compare “apples with apples”
through a common repair estimate
for mat, proponents say that
CEDEX has reduced the need for
inspectors to manually sample estimates and enabled the development of more automated tariff
checking. As well as streamlining
day-to-day operations, the industry’s decision to adopt this common language has also allowed
container owners to improve their
control and understanding of estimate pricing, with larger business benefits.
Tank benefits
But although CEDEX codes already exist for tank containers, this
sector of the industry has so far
failed to adopt any common approach to repair coding. Why is
this and is it now time to revisit
the issue of a universal coding system for tank containers?
Intermodal asset software provider Real Asset Management
(RAM) is one supplier that believes the tank container industry
would benefit from moving more
to a common coding approach.
The company, which supplies
business management software
both to the dry freight and tank
industries, says that it sees a large
discrepancy between the two sectors over the coding issue, with
cost and efficiency implications.
“At present, we feel that the
lack of standard coding is hindering some customers when it
comes to the maintenance and
repair of tanks,” says RAM’s managing director Keith Dolby. “Unless the client pays for bespoke
EDI links with all the relevant
depot systems, repair data has to
be entered manually, which, of
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46
Innovation in Valves and Sealing tm
In the late 1980s, the ISO
CEDEX (Container Equipment
Data Exchange) codes were established as a common electronic language for container operators, lessors, surveyors and depots. The
launch of CEDEX created a universal “dictionary” to translate different items on a repair estimate,
as well as the movement of equipment into and out of depots, into
a standard format, enabling data
to be transferred by EDI between
the different parties and their varying computer applications.
The concept was that anyone
receiving a coded estimate could
easily understand exactly what the
damage was to which part of the
container, along with the estimated cost and time of repair.
With a few notable exceptions,
CEDEX has since been widely
adopted by the global dry freight
Tank containers have around 1,000 individual components, but CEDEX could
generate enough codes to cover all the requirements
course, results in errors when large
amounts of data are involved.
“While RAM is happy to provide this bespoke development,
the reality is that many smaller
tank organisations will put this issue on the back burner and miss
out on key benefits. This is not
what we want for our customers,
but unfortunately the issue is out
of our hands.”
“RAM’s Repair4000 system
produces valuable data, such as
how often repairs are carried out,
the average cost of each repair type
and which depots are the most
cost effective.We would like to see
our tank customers get the same
benefits from Repair4000 as our
container customers and believe
that the lack of a common coding platform is currently hindering this,” says Dolby. He argues
that the industry as a whole would
benefit if it could work together
to define and agree upon universal tank coding.“It would enhance
the flow of data, not just for our
customers, but all tank operators,
lessors and depots.”
Complex issue
One of the issues that inevitably
crops up when broaching this subject is the greater complexity of
tank containers compared with
dry freight boxes, particularly in
the area of valve design.Valves have
a large number of replaceable
components which would all have
to be given a unique character or
numerical reference.
Moreover, universal coding
would have to include information on valve type (top and bottom valves are not interchangeable), manufacturer and spares
cost according to make of valve.
This is not something that
CEDEX has to do for dry freight
boxes, where there is no differentiation between manufacturers
- a panel is just a panel.
But none of this presents an
insurmountable problem, observes
John Evans, managing director of
John Evans International (JEI). His
company offers a number of different computer-based solutions
for managing repairs and surveys,
including hand-held units for inputting data in the field.
“While tanks are of course
more complex than dry freight
boxes, averaging up to around
1,000 individual components,
CEDEX could generate enough
codes to cover all the requirements,” Evans says.
And the complexity of tanks
pales into insignificance next to
reefer containers, which have up
to 35,000 individual components
differing from manufacturer to
manufacturer, making it simply
impossible to uniquely identify all
the parts.
“From a mathematical perspective, there are certainly
enough combinations in CEDEX
to uniquely identify all tank container components and damage
codes required,” confirms Evans.
Whether these can all be presented in a mnemonic way, however, is not quite so clear.As Evans
points out, many of the dry freight
CEDEX codes can be interpreted
pretty easily by a layman (PNL for
panel, for instance), improving the
system’s ease of use. Could the
same be achieved with a component on a Fort Vale footvalve?
There are also some common
practices in tank estimate reporting that do not exist in the dry
freight sector, such as the use of
the “clock face” diagram to indicate location and type of damage
on dished ends. Whether such an
established and practical approach
could continue to run alongside a
universal code is another question.
Some tank companies, particularly those with mixed leasing
fleets, have already decided to
adopt CEDEX. Says Colin
Rubery of leasing company GE
SeaCo. “We pretty much use
CEDEX. Some years the odd tank
slips through, but generally the
system works just fine,” he says.
CEDEX can be quite complex, he confirms, and depends on
the ability of the estimator to use
the right codes. GE SeaCo uses a
combination of 30 damage codes
and 30 repair codes.
All estimates are about money,
of course.“What we are interested
in is the total cost and who is paying. These codes help determine
where the costs are going to be
allocated,” adds Rubery.
Lack of agreement
But while CEDEX is used by some
individual companies, it is the lack
of common agreement to use this
(or any other) coding system as an
industry standard that is the real issue. Some observers maintain that
the higher margins that have been
enjoyed in the tank container sector as a whole, from depots upwards,
have helped to accommodate the
status quo, with less financial and
operational pressure to tackle this
as an industry-wide issue.
By contrast, the dry freight sector had more of an incentive to
weed out fundamental process inefficiencies. As Evans points out,
computer technology when
CEDEX was first launched was far
less advanced than now, so there
was a real benefit in minimising
the amount of data being transferred by using common codes.
This is not such an issue today.
But leading players like Stolt
Tank Containers (STC) will need
some persuasion to move away
from their dedicated systems, in
STC’s case its Webhub network.
“We work with 120 depots globally and they all use our system;
we are not considering changing,”
the company says.
RAM, for one, argues that a
distinction needs to be made between the coding issue and the
systems issue. It says that moving
to a common coding platform
would not preclude individual
companies from using their own
management systems. However, it
would enable the development of
a clear common language, rather
than the current lingua franca, that
could support the creation of a
common EDI platform or be inApril 2007
WorldCargo
news
TANK CONTAINERS
tegrated within bespoke management
systems.
Depot difficulties
Where do the depots stand on this? Because there is no common coding system, repair depots often have to run multiple systems - their own, plus their customers’. Chris Preston, director of UKbased Haztank comments, “Depots have
their own systems that they have developed individually. These don’t integrate
with the owners’ systems and so every
tank is entered twice.” Haztank has a basic DOS-based system that, says Preston,
“does what it does,” that is, to show where
the tank container is in the depot and allow invoices to be created.
Haztank finds the double-entry approach an annoyance and would prefer to
have one system, but wonders whether a
single system could manage both the simplified information needed by the repair
depots and the often quite detailed data
demanded by leasing companies. “Leasing
companies’ software is often complex and
can be slow, especially when you are dealing with the USA or China,” he notes.
Koen van den Broeck, head of Van
Loon’s repair department in Antwerp, argues that one of the main challenges is that
staff are increasingly being eliminated
through redundancy. “In the past, we used
our own estimates and faxed them to the
owners,” he states. Now, however,Van Loon
is required to go into other companies’ bespoke systems.
But for any system to work properly,
each individual who deals with it must
be capable of entering and deciphering
the data. Van den Broeck believes that
technical competency has declined in
many companies, leading to an increased
lack of understanding regarding tank repair issues. Because the operators are no
longer updating their data, he argues, interpretation of tank repair codings has
declined, leading to delays in getting authorisation for any required work.
As van den Broeck notes, costs to repair depots have also risen because they
are now responsible for entering details
into their customers’ systems. “This is an
added cost to us,” he says.
And inaccuracies can easily occur
with, for example, more containers actually located in a depot than are indicated
on the operators’ software when different people are using different systems to
try and enter the same data.
From the repair depot’s perspective,
accurate pre-advice is also needed to ensure that any tank container gets properly placed since demurrage charges can
apply if a container gets put in the wrong
stack. A good way of working, feels van
den Broek, is to have a baseline estimate
and a lump sum price agreed in advance.
Then any repairs up to that baseline price
could be agreed and repaired without any
further action.“This approach works well
and can speed things up,” he comments.
“There is a need for change but we
cannot just destroy our own system since
our invoicing passes through it,” notes van
den Broeck. Preston agrees: “Depots
would want to know who is going to pay
and not everyone is bothered. We could
make more use of an integrated system.
But for it to be effective it would probably be expensive.”
Many systems today are based on the
old Sea Containers approach, where there
was a 47 point repair estimate. For example, code 17 means “corroded” and since
estimation needs to be quick, this works
very well.“As long as everyone knows that
code 17 means ‘corroded’ we are nearly
there.What we don’t want is a system that
has code 21 as ‘corroded’ because that’s
where mistakes and confusion arise.”
Data presentation
The other challenge facing any system whether bespoke or off-the-shelf - is how
the data should be presented. The use of
“shorthand” codes undoubtedly speeds up
a surveyor’s work when estimating damage in the field. However, the increased
lack of detailed technical knowledge
highlighted by Van Loon would seem to
indicate a danger that numerical codes
could be misinterpreted, leading to queries and misunderstanding over estimated
costs to repair any damage.
From this perspective, any unified approach to coding could only benefit the
April 2007
tank container repair system as a whole
provided it enabled data to be input in
clearly understood and agreed codes that
could be translated on estimates and reports into brief plain language statements
for use and authorisation by non-technical staff.
To meet the diverse needs of all parties, any universal system would also have
to be capable of providing detailed data
for the operators and lessors that could
be hidden and not accessed by the repair
depots, since they need more limited data
combined with the ability to properly
invoice clients. It would also need to provide a high level of security to ensure data
integrity and may need to be web-based.
However, the current reliance on bespoke systems may carry the seeds of its
own destruction because the original
computer coding and programming that
goes into these systems is designed to meet
individual needs that may no longer be
relevant. The high cost of maintaining
bespoke systems, especially as the size of
any connected database grows, increases
rapidly in terms of updating and maintaining the hardware and software and also
in terms of staff training.
Ultimately, this may be a key driving
factor behind a change from individual
bespoke systems using their own coding,
duplicated at every tank repair depot, into
a single unified code structure.The process would definitely need to be facilitated
by one or more industry organisations,
such as the International Tank Container
Organisation (ITCO) or the Container
Owners Association (COA). Certainly, the
backing of the Institute of International
Container Lessors (IICL) was a key factor in creating industry unanimity to get
CEDEX up and running in the dry
freight sector.
But two other key factors also drove
the rise of CEDEX for the dry freight industry. The first was a champion, in the
shape of Transamerica Leasing.The second
was a clear commercial opportunity, in the
shape of the industry EDI communications
system created by Mark North through
Cedex Services International.
The question now is: will a similar
combination come together to further the
cause of a common language for tank
container repairs? ❏
Tank repairers could derive major benefits from
a common approach to component and damage
coding (Picture courtesy Hoyer)
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47
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news
TANK CONTAINERS
lead times mean that the majority of these
units have already been ordered.
GE SeaCo has implemented a new SAP
computer operating system over the past
year, providing the capability to manage,
organisation-wide, a full range of activities, including financial, asset and cost accounting, operations, personnel, equipment,
online documentation and archived documents.The package also incorporates customer relationship and supply chain management.
Over the past year GE SeaCo has been
distancing itself from Sea Containers, one
of its shareholders, which has filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the
US while it implements a financial restructuring programme. GE Capital, the
other major shareholder, has enquired
about purchasing Sea Containers’ stake in
GE SeaCo but without success, as yet. GE
SeaCo is self-funded, operated as an independent company and will shortly be
moving its headquarters from offices
rented in the Sea Containers building on
the River Thames to new premises at
London Bridge.
the present booming transport market
cools down. Of course, the flipside of the
coin is that this evolving market scenario
will offer opportunities to those parties
ready and willing to take advantage of
them.”
Cronos upward spiral
One of the fast-growing tank leasing
fleets, in relative terms, in recent years has
been that of Cronos. In the space of three
years the Cronos tank fleet has doubled
in size to 6,500 units, including 1,500 new
tanks added in 2006 alone. Investments
in new tanks topped US$30M for the
second year running last year.The Cronos
tank focus is on standard, 20ft IMO 1/
T11 portable tanks.
Cronos is active in the leasing of dry
freight, tank, refrigerated and other spe-
cial intermodal containers, with an owned
and managed fleet of over 440,000 TEU.
The lessor increased its overall fleet utilisation to 92.1 per cent at the end of 2006,
up from 90.8 per cent a year earlier. The
investment emphasis in recent years has
been on tanks, reefers and other specials.
The company was prepared for another aggressive tank newbuilding programme in 2007, and there will no doubt
be numerous additions. However, the current inability of tank manufacturers to
meet the high worldwide demand with
enough new tanks quickly enough means
that the number of new tanks joining the
Cronos fleet this year will fall somewhat
short of management’s aspirations. ❏
With the 500 new units added in 2006,
Trifleet now has 9,000 tanks in its fleet
Girard Equipment, Inc.
Trifleet grows
Despite the influx of 500 new tanks in
2006, boosting its total fleet size to 9,000
units, Trifleet Leasing still managed to
boost average fleet utilisation, calculated
on the basis of paid rental days, by 6%
during the course of the year.
“We experienced a very strong market demand for our services worldwide
last year,” states Philip van Rooijen,
Trifleet’s managing director. “Although
the US market slowed during the summer, picking up again slightly at the end
of the year, European and Asian customers continued to show a high interest in
leasing tank containers. One exception,
however, has been the demand for gas
tanks which sharply declined during 2006,
with major companies offhiring most of
their tanks of older design.”
Last year was eventful in other ways for
Trifleet. After intensive discussions with
majority shareholder ING Lease, a management buyout (MBO) was effected in
October 2006, with support from investors in tank containers managed by the
company and several financial institutions.
As a result of the transaction the management team, led by van Rooijen, acquired
the majority of the shares in the company.
After taking into account corrections
relating to the MBO, Trifleet achieved
normalised gross revenues of €23.5M in
2006. Looking to the year ahead, the lessor anticipates continued strong demand
for its services. However, Trifleet is being less aggressive on the tank container
newbuilding front than some of its competitors. “In view of the fact that leasing
rates have still not picked up to a level
that reflects the current increased cost
of a new tank container, we have reduced
the inflow of new tank containers to approximately 150 for 2007,” explains van
Rooijen.
“Going forward, we are reacting to
meet changing customer needs in various
ways. In response to the ever-increasing
requirement for fast, electronic information, Trifleet Leasing provides its customers worldwide with access to real-time information on leased tanks and contracts
through a modern extranet service.We are
also adapting our operation to cope with
the increasing number of enquiries for special tanks that leasing companies are now
receiving.This business is posing challenges
to lessors, as the remarketability of specials
is generally lower.”
Fresh challenge
The major challenge for all tank container
lessors is to achieve returns that justify
further investment. The fact that the recent rapid escalation in the price of a new
tank has not been matched by upward
pressure on rates to anywhere near the
same extent makes the challenge that
much greater. Furthermore, lessors are
facing competition not only from fellow
leasing companies, but also, increasingly,
some of the major tank operators who
are currently investing heavily in orders
for new tanks.
“We believe that one outcome of the
current high-demand, competitive market is increasing pressure for further consolidation in the tank leasing sector,”
concludes van Rooijen,“especially when
April 2007
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49
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TANK CONTAINERS
Tank repair - time to speak
a common language?
Would a common approach to repair estimate coding
bring benefits to the tank container industry as it has
already done for the dry freight sector?
container community, helping to
automate the transfer and authorisation of repair estimates and reducing duplication of data entry
and human errors.
Because container owners
now compare “apples with apples”
through a common repair estimate
for mat, proponents say that
CEDEX has reduced the need for
inspectors to manually sample estimates and enabled the development of more automated tariff
checking. As well as streamlining
day-to-day operations, the industry’s decision to adopt this common language has also allowed
container owners to improve their
control and understanding of estimate pricing, with larger business benefits.
Tank benefits
But although CEDEX codes already exist for tank containers, this
sector of the industry has so far
failed to adopt any common approach to repair coding. Why is
this and is it now time to revisit
the issue of a universal coding system for tank containers?
Intermodal asset software provider Real Asset Management
(RAM) is one supplier that believes the tank container industry
would benefit from moving more
to a common coding approach.
The company, which supplies
business management software
both to the dry freight and tank
industries, says that it sees a large
discrepancy between the two sectors over the coding issue, with
cost and efficiency implications.
“At present, we feel that the
lack of standard coding is hindering some customers when it
comes to the maintenance and
repair of tanks,” says RAM’s managing director Keith Dolby. “Unless the client pays for bespoke
EDI links with all the relevant
depot systems, repair data has to
be entered manually, which, of
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In the late 1980s, the ISO
CEDEX (Container Equipment
Data Exchange) codes were established as a common electronic language for container operators, lessors, surveyors and depots. The
launch of CEDEX created a universal “dictionary” to translate different items on a repair estimate,
as well as the movement of equipment into and out of depots, into
a standard format, enabling data
to be transferred by EDI between
the different parties and their varying computer applications.
The concept was that anyone
receiving a coded estimate could
easily understand exactly what the
damage was to which part of the
container, along with the estimated cost and time of repair.
With a few notable exceptions,
CEDEX has since been widely
adopted by the global dry freight
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Tank containers have around 1,000 individual components, but CEDEX could
generate enough codes to cover all the requirements
course, results in errors when large
amounts of data are involved.
“While RAM is happy to provide this bespoke development,
the reality is that many smaller
tank organisations will put this issue on the back burner and miss
out on key benefits. This is not
what we want for our customers,
but unfortunately the issue is out
of our hands.”
“RAM’s Repair4000 system
produces valuable data, such as
how often repairs are carried out,
the average cost of each repair type
and which depots are the most
cost effective.We would like to see
our tank customers get the same
benefits from Repair4000 as our
container customers and believe
that the lack of a common coding platform is currently hindering this,” says Dolby. He argues
that the industry as a whole would
benefit if it could work together
to define and agree upon universal tank coding.“It would enhance
the flow of data, not just for our
customers, but all tank operators,
lessors and depots.”
Complex issue
One of the issues that inevitably
crops up when broaching this subject is the greater complexity of
tank containers compared with
dry freight boxes, particularly in
the area of valve design.Valves have
a large number of replaceable
components which would all have
to be given a unique character or
numerical reference.
Moreover, universal coding
would have to include information on valve type (top and bottom valves are not interchangeable), manufacturer and spares
cost according to make of valve.
This is not something that
CEDEX has to do for dry freight
boxes, where there is no differentiation between manufacturers
- a panel is just a panel.
But none of this presents an
insurmountable problem, observes
John Evans, managing director of
John Evans International (JEI). His
company offers a number of different computer-based solutions
for managing repairs and surveys,
including hand-held units for inputting data in the field.
“While tanks are of course
more complex than dry freight
boxes, averaging up to around
1,000 individual components,
CEDEX could generate enough
codes to cover all the requirements,” Evans says.
And the complexity of tanks
pales into insignificance next to
reefer containers, which have up
to 35,000 individual components
differing from manufacturer to
manufacturer, making it simply
impossible to uniquely identify all
the parts.
“From a mathematical perspective, there are certainly
enough combinations in CEDEX
to uniquely identify all tank container components and damage
codes required,” confirms Evans.
Whether these can all be presented in a mnemonic way, however, is not quite so clear.As Evans
points out, many of the dry freight
CEDEX codes can be interpreted
pretty easily by a layman (PNL for
panel, for instance), improving the
system’s ease of use. Could the
same be achieved with a component on a Fort Vale footvalve?
There are also some common
practices in tank estimate reporting that do not exist in the dry
freight sector, such as the use of
the “clock face” diagram to indicate location and type of damage
on dished ends. Whether such an
established and practical approach
could continue to run alongside a
universal code is another question.
Some tank companies, particularly those with mixed leasing
fleets, have already decided to
adopt CEDEX. Says Colin
Rubery of leasing company GE
SeaCo. “We pretty much use
CEDEX. Some years the odd tank
slips through, but generally the
system works just fine,” he says.
CEDEX can be quite complex, he confirms, and depends on
the ability of the estimator to use
the right codes. GE SeaCo uses a
combination of 30 damage codes
and 30 repair codes.
All estimates are about money,
of course.“What we are interested
in is the total cost and who is paying. These codes help determine
where the costs are going to be
allocated,” adds Rubery.
Lack of agreement
But while CEDEX is used by some
individual companies, it is the lack
of common agreement to use this
(or any other) coding system as an
industry standard that is the real issue. Some observers maintain that
the higher margins that have been
enjoyed in the tank container sector as a whole, from depots upwards,
have helped to accommodate the
status quo, with less financial and
operational pressure to tackle this
as an industry-wide issue.
By contrast, the dry freight sector had more of an incentive to
weed out fundamental process inefficiencies. As Evans points out,
computer technology when
CEDEX was first launched was far
less advanced than now, so there
was a real benefit in minimising
the amount of data being transferred by using common codes.
This is not such an issue today.
But leading players like Stolt
Tank Containers (STC) will need
some persuasion to move away
from their dedicated systems, in
STC’s case its Webhub network.
“We work with 120 depots globally and they all use our system;
we are not considering changing,”
the company says.
RAM, for one, argues that a
distinction needs to be made between the coding issue and the
systems issue. It says that moving
to a common coding platform
would not preclude individual
companies from using their own
management systems. However, it
would enable the development of
a clear common language, rather
than the current lingua franca, that
could support the creation of a
common EDI platform or be inApril 2007
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TANK CONTAINERS
tegrated within bespoke management
systems.
Depot difficulties
Where do the depots stand on this? Because there is no common coding system, repair depots often have to run multiple systems - their own, plus their customers’. Chris Preston, director of UKbased Haztank comments, “Depots have
their own systems that they have developed individually. These don’t integrate
with the owners’ systems and so every
tank is entered twice.” Haztank has a basic DOS-based system that, says Preston,
“does what it does,” that is, to show where
the tank container is in the depot and allow invoices to be created.
Haztank finds the double-entry approach an annoyance and would prefer to
have one system, but wonders whether a
single system could manage both the simplified information needed by the repair
depots and the often quite detailed data
demanded by leasing companies. “Leasing
companies’ software is often complex and
can be slow, especially when you are dealing with the USA or China,” he notes.
Koen van den Broeck, head of Van
Loon’s repair department in Antwerp, argues that one of the main challenges is that
staff are increasingly being eliminated
through redundancy. “In the past, we used
our own estimates and faxed them to the
owners,” he states. Now, however,Van Loon
is required to go into other companies’ bespoke systems.
But for any system to work properly,
each individual who deals with it must
be capable of entering and deciphering
the data. Van den Broeck believes that
technical competency has declined in
many companies, leading to an increased
lack of understanding regarding tank repair issues. Because the operators are no
longer updating their data, he argues, interpretation of tank repair codings has
declined, leading to delays in getting authorisation for any required work.
As van den Broeck notes, costs to repair depots have also risen because they
are now responsible for entering details
into their customers’ systems. “This is an
added cost to us,” he says.
And inaccuracies can easily occur
with, for example, more containers actually located in a depot than are indicated
on the operators’ software when different people are using different systems to
try and enter the same data.
From the repair depot’s perspective,
accurate pre-advice is also needed to ensure that any tank container gets properly placed since demurrage charges can
apply if a container gets put in the wrong
stack. A good way of working, feels van
den Broek, is to have a baseline estimate
and a lump sum price agreed in advance.
Then any repairs up to that baseline price
could be agreed and repaired without any
further action.“This approach works well
and can speed things up,” he comments.
“There is a need for change but we
cannot just destroy our own system since
our invoicing passes through it,” notes van
den Broeck. Preston agrees: “Depots
would want to know who is going to pay
and not everyone is bothered. We could
make more use of an integrated system.
But for it to be effective it would probably be expensive.”
Many systems today are based on the
old Sea Containers approach, where there
was a 47 point repair estimate. For example, code 17 means “corroded” and since
estimation needs to be quick, this works
very well.“As long as everyone knows that
code 17 means ‘corroded’ we are nearly
there.What we don’t want is a system that
has code 21 as ‘corroded’ because that’s
where mistakes and confusion arise.”
Data presentation
The other challenge facing any system whether bespoke or off-the-shelf - is how
the data should be presented. The use of
“shorthand” codes undoubtedly speeds up
a surveyor’s work when estimating damage in the field. However, the increased
lack of detailed technical knowledge
highlighted by Van Loon would seem to
indicate a danger that numerical codes
could be misinterpreted, leading to queries and misunderstanding over estimated
costs to repair any damage.
From this perspective, any unified approach to coding could only benefit the
April 2007
tank container repair system as a whole
provided it enabled data to be input in
clearly understood and agreed codes that
could be translated on estimates and reports into brief plain language statements
for use and authorisation by non-technical staff.
To meet the diverse needs of all parties, any universal system would also have
to be capable of providing detailed data
for the operators and lessors that could
be hidden and not accessed by the repair
depots, since they need more limited data
combined with the ability to properly
invoice clients. It would also need to provide a high level of security to ensure data
integrity and may need to be web-based.
However, the current reliance on bespoke systems may carry the seeds of its
own destruction because the original
computer coding and programming that
goes into these systems is designed to meet
individual needs that may no longer be
relevant. The high cost of maintaining
bespoke systems, especially as the size of
any connected database grows, increases
rapidly in terms of updating and maintaining the hardware and software and also
in terms of staff training.
Ultimately, this may be a key driving
factor behind a change from individual
bespoke systems using their own coding,
duplicated at every tank repair depot, into
a single unified code structure.The process would definitely need to be facilitated
by one or more industry organisations,
such as the International Tank Container
Organisation (ITCO) or the Container
Owners Association (COA). Certainly, the
backing of the Institute of International
Container Lessors (IICL) was a key factor in creating industry unanimity to get
CEDEX up and running in the dry
freight sector.
But two other key factors also drove
the rise of CEDEX for the dry freight industry. The first was a champion, in the
shape of Transamerica Leasing.The second
was a clear commercial opportunity, in the
shape of the industry EDI communications
system created by Mark North through
Cedex Services International.
The question now is: will a similar
combination come together to further the
cause of a common language for tank
container repairs? ❏
Tank repairers could derive major benefits from
a common approach to component and damage
coding (Picture courtesy Hoyer)
䊴 Goosenecks, up to 45 tonnes
䊱
Self-loading lifting trailers with cassettes,
up to 120 tonnes
䊱
Roll trailers with safety hooks
Other equipment:
䊱
Roll trailer with fixed gooseneck
䊴 Skeletal trailers with container guides, up to 60 tonnes
Multi-trailer systems, up to 60 tonnes 䊳
䊴 Skeletal trailer with Rockerbeams, up to 70 tonnes
Cornerless "bumpcar" with "Rockerbeams" 䊳
䊴 Cassettes for self-loading lifting trailers
Used equipment available!! Ask for details.
51
Section 1
8/5/07
9:55 pm
Page 52