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Panama Canal: Post Panamax
By Jean-Paul Rodrigue Panama Canal nears completion on a new set of locks that are expected to impact trade and the world's economy. Explore the future of the Canal as detailed in a WPBT2 Production - containing comments by PortEconomics member Jean Paul Rodrigue. ...
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The Analyst: vying for attention
There's certainly been a lot of chatter around New York about infrastructure and about the local port authority, but most of the press, traditional media and online coverage has not been about maritime things. The biggest headlines have been garnered by plans for a new $4bn revamp of the 1960s vintage LaGuardia Airport (which, sensibly, would include a ferry link to the business areas of Manhattan), writes Barry Parker. Peter de Langen through his column "The Analyst" in Port Strategy comments: "With high profile rail fails, a new...
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Anatomy of a Port Disaster: The Tianjin Port Explosions
By Jean-Paul Rodrigue Successive explosions at the port of Tianjin, the third largest in the world in terms of tonnage and the 10th largest in terms of container volumes, resulted in deadly blasts in the Chinese port city. PortEconomics member Jean-Paul Rodrigue, describes the anatomy of the disaster - and provides his input during an inverview on the national Chinese national television (CCTV) on August 17 on this topic. "Ports are significant consumers of land involving terminal operations as well as port-centric logistics...
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Traffic decline in container ports: the exception or the new normal?
By Theo Notteboom Recently, Hamburg announced that container throughput in the Elbe port saw a decline of 6.8% in the first half of 2015 compared to the same period last year, mainly caused by a sharp decrease in the trade volumes with Russia and China. The container business is generally considered as a growth sector. Over the past decades, ports around the world have become used to welcoming traffic growth year after year. A decline in container traffic is considered as unusual. But how often have ports reported cargo losses over the...
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Growing up fast: brazilian ports
With a local market containing 196.7m consumers, a total area of 8.5 million km2 and the seventh largest economy in the world in terms of GDP, Brazil naturally attracts attention from investors from all sectors that are interested in the opportunities in this emerging country. Recently, it's the country's 8,500 km coastline and its ports - responsible for more than 95% of the country's international trade - that are attracting the attention of international players in the maritime and port logistics sector. The Brazilian port sector has...
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Ports of call combinations on the Europe-Asia trade
By Theo Notteboom When container shipping lines design a weekly service between Asia and North Europe, they have to decide how many and which ports of call to include in the schedule. On the North European side, they typically ensure they serve the biggest port regions. Therefore, almost all liner services on the North Europe – Far East trade have ports of call in the Rhine-Scheldt Delta (Rotterdam, Antwerp, Zeebrugge), the north German multi-port gateway region (Hamburg, Bremerhaven, Wilhelmshaven) and the southeast coast of the UK...
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How dependent are north-european ports on containers?
By Theo Notteboom Discussions on port development, planning and competitiveness often tend to revolve around container flows. Quite a few ports around the world have developed some kind of 'container fetish', implying they have developed a very strong focus on container throughput. But how dependent are ports on container traffic? The infographic shows the evolution in some of the main north-European container ports. Three dimensions are presented. The vertical axis shows the container dependency or the share of container throughput in the...
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How dependent are west-med ports on containers?
By Theo Notteboom In last week's infographic, Theo Notteboom analysed the container dependency of major North-European ports. But how is the situation in southern Europe? How dependent are West-Mediterranean ports on container traffic? As before, there are three dimensions in the infographic. The vertical axis shows the container dependency or the share of container throughput in the total throughput of the port. The horizontal axis depicts the degree of containerization or the share of containerized cargo in the total general cargo...
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