Containers
Containers
Containers
The port system in northern China
Only 20 years ago the Chinese port system was still in its infancy stage. Hong Kong acted as the only container gateway to China. Since the second half of the 1990s, throughput at Chinese mainland ports started to accelerate. In recent years, shipping lines have been dedicating higher capacities and deploying larger vessels to cope with the increasing Chinese imports and exports. Chinese port activity is mainly concentrated in three regions: the Pearl River Delta (PRD), the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and the Bohai Sea Economic Rim (BER). The...
Containers
A strategic appraisal of the attractiveness of seaport-based transport corridors: the southern Africa case
A strategic appraisal of the attractiveness of seaport-based transport corridors: the Southern African Case is the subject of the recent port study conducted by PortEconomics co-director Theo Notteboom along with Darren Fraser and was published in the 36th issue of the scholarly Journal of Transport Geography. The past decade has brought significant growth at, and competition between regional gateway ports and intermediate hub container ports in Southern Africa. Corridors are the essential link between these ports and continental...
Containers
The waves of containerisation: shifts in global maritime transportation
PortEconomics member Jean-Paul Rodrigue provides evidence of the cyclic behavior of containerization through an analysis of long, medium and short waves of container ports. His guest lecture at the USC Price Sol Prize School of Public Policy has been recorded and provides valuable information about the box. The container, like any technical innovation, has a functional (within transport chains) and geographical diffusion potential where a phase of maturity is eventually reached. Evidence from the global container port system suggests five...
Containers
Container vessel turnaround times across the world
There is a wide range of studies on port efficiency but curiously enough, these studies have never focused on turnaround times in ports, despite this being considered as a key indicator of efficiency. More often we see studies in operations research about queuing models of vessels in relation to port entrance channels and berth allocation and productivity, but there is a drastic lack of systematic reporting and analyses of ship turnaround times. In an article published in Port Technolgy International , PortEconomics associate...
Containers
The Analyst: P3 - more ports, less terminals?
The P3 alliance between Maersk Line, Mediterranean Shipping Company and CMA CGM will have a significant impact on ports worldwide, but who will win and who will lose? PortEconomics co-director Peter de Langen discusses the move that might change maritime transport systems around the globe, and its implication for ports and terminals, in his Analyst viewpoint column published in the magazine PortStrategy. Peter analyses why "while at first sight P3 seems to have a clearly defined scope for an operational partnership with the joint...
Containers
The 'humble hero' of the global economy: containers
By Jean-Paul Rodrigue PortEconomics member Jean-Paul Rodrigue discusses the role of the hero of the global economy, the container, and how our access to global trade goods resembles the Melanesian cargo cult, without the rituals - in a viewpoint article published in Al Jazeera America. As Jean-Paul states: "Globalization may have inadvertently spread the belief that goods appear on the shelves of retail stores spontaneously, or at least without much effort. For an average consumer, the ease of each purchase, particularly an online purchase,...
Containers
Med ports: MoS and the efficient accommodation of mega-containerships
PortEconomics co-director Peter de Langen gave a key-note speech at the Euro Mediterranean Forum in Livorno, Italy, on opportunities for Mediterranean ports to take advantage of the Motorways of the Seas and efficiently accommodate mega-containerships The event brought together a large group of industry experts from Europe, to discuss important issues like the challenges ahead for Mediterranean ports and port cooperation potentialities, the extension of Motorways of the Sea to Southern Mediterranean countries, and the views of the port...
Containers
Enhancing terminal operations, hinterland access & logistics chains
PortEconomics member Jean-Paul Rodrigue contributed in the Port Technolgy International , an article on "Enhancing terminal operations, hinterland accesss and logistics chains". Source: Jean Paul Rodrigue (2013). Enhancing terminal operations, hinterland access and logistics chains. Port Technology International, No. 59. It is difficult to argue against strategies that reduce costs while improving the performance of supply chains. However, assessing the value of such improvements is challenging. While 'beauty is in the eye of the...
Containers