Ports are always in motion, but now more than ever. The energy transition, digitisation, the New Silk Road, container alliances and ever larger container ships all impact the port landscape. SWZ|Maritime's port special discusses each of these topics.
The special has been coordinated by port economist Bart Kuipers of the Erasmus Centre for Urban, Port and Transport Economics (UPT). In his preface to the special, he discusses current developments in ports and introduces the articles that form the port special in SWZ|Maritime. Read the translated version of his preface below.
Ports in Transition
Like the maritime sector, seaports are highly sensitive to external influences. An important start of the lectures on port economics that we give each year is a presentation of the driving forces behind the growth of the maritime system. We distinguish forces such as government policy, demographics, energy and sustainability, technology, economy and finally finance. These forces almost always have an impact on both the ports and the shipping industry.
- Think of the "policy" power of the sulphur directive: low-sulphur fuels can only be used when they become available, leading to significant investments in the refinery complexes in the seaports. The CO2 tax is also an important policy issue with a major impact on seaports, on which the Dutch government will soon take a "sensible" decision.
- Think of the strong population growth in Asia and Africa and the ageing population in Europe: ageing consumers have a relatively higher demand for services instead of products, leading to lower growth of transport flows and to less demand for container handling capacity in the seaports.
- No other theme has been discussed as much as sustainability in relation to seaports and shipping. On average, shipping will have to emit forty per cent less CO2 by 2030, and for industry in the Dutch seaports this target has even been set at 49 per cent. This has major consequences for the transport of coal and oil: new types of cargo will be transported internationally in new types of ships: biomass and LNG are examples – although LNG is mainly seen as an interim solution.
- "Technology" is a catch-all concept; from rapidly changing offshore wind technology to information technology. Artificial intelligence and blockchain have become concepts that are not lacking in any presentation about the future of our seaports.
- "Economics" is perhaps the most unpredictable factor at the moment: one tweet from President Trump and world trade is disrupted. Perhaps he is currently twittering that German car imports are being taxed at a rate of 25 per cent. Even without Trump, however, the world economy has entered a process of "slowbalisation" following the strong growth between 1990 and 2010. And just now that ever larger container ships are entering the market.
- The last force is 'finance'. The news this spring that Moody's rating agency categories the prestigious Maersk as a company with a "junk" status says much.
Responding to Forces of Change
The Dutch seaports are strongly influenced by these forces, despite the fact that they are very different from each other. The energy transition is just as far-reaching for an offshore service port as Den Helder as it is for Rotterdam with its petrochemical complex. And Brexit has not even been mentioned in the above list.
All seaports must respond to these forces of change. Some ports are doing this more proactively than others – the announcement that the transhipment of coal in the port of Amsterdam will end in 2030 is an example of a proactive policy. Groningen Seaports also has a similar proactive policy of deploying hydrogen, while North Sea Port is doing so with bio-based.
Port Special
In order to reflect on all relevant developments in seaports, we actually need several port specials. Here we present a selection of relevant themes, described by specialists from the Erasmus Centre for Urban, Port and Transport Economics (UPT), the port advisory centre of Erasmus University Rotterdam.
- Maurice Jansen discusses the port as an innovation ecosystem and describes the great importance of the training and innovation infrastructure on the basis of illustrative "metro maps". In a second article he describes the digitisation of the port and explains relevant, new concepts.
- China has not yet been mentioned in this introduction. For the ports in the Gdansk-Le Havre range, China's investment programme in rail and seaports – the Belt and Road Initiative – is of great importance: how should we interpret the impact of Belt and Road? Wouter Jacobs also describes the geopolitical aspects of this initiative and its consequences for northwestern European ports.
- China is also inextricably linked to the deluge of containers that are being transported by sea and increasingly come to our country by rail. The increasing scale of container ships is causing major problems in the handling of inland shipping in the port of Rotterdam. Martijn Streng and Niels van Saase discuss this in their article.
- Larissa van der Lugt describes how she views the exemption that container shipowners receive in alliances and related forms of cooperation, a current issue on which the EU will decide next year.
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Picture: Ports are in transition; production and transport for offshore wind farms have become important. Here, the Aeolus in the port of Flushing, the Netherlands (by Flying Focus).
