This report aims to analyze the influence of the so called “alliances” of container shipping companies, at global level, and their related impacts on the Italian port system and in particular on the maritime economy of the Mezzogiorno. In specific, the study will consider the full container liner services that have called the Italian ports before the entry into the scene of the two main alliances 2M and O3, on the global maritime market, and will be compared with the new services that are active from February 2015. These data allow to conduct a deep and structured study on a very timely topic: the adaptation of the physical and management structures of the Italian ports to the new types of ships. The so-called Vessel Sharing Agreements (VSA) have been and are still a strategic instrument adopted by major worldwide carriers in order to optimize the use of vessels and simultaneously reducing transport costs of the principal world routes.

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This short report shows the state of advancement of the “Legge Obiettivo” (Target Law), a law conceived to speed up bureaucratic and administrative procedures, kick starting the construction sites of major infrastructures in Italy. The report explains that there’s a low level of completion of the plan, due in all likeliness to the major procedural complexities at play in our country. The second consideration relates to the modest functioning of the “Legge Obiettivo” on the administrative front. Lastly – a necessary observation – the tendency is to continue focusing in particular on road and rail works. While these are important, the question to ask, at this point, is whether Italy intends to afford ports and interport logistics platforms strategic dignity or not.

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This short report speaks of challenges that the naval big alliances launched at the Italian ports. This is a brief review of what happened which will show how important it’s the upgrading of infrastructure and the revitalization of our maritime and logistics system.

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Speech by Michele Acciaro from Kühne Logistics University (KLU) of Hamburg given at the conference organized by Federagenti on 16th December 2015 in Rome: “The Giants’ limit: how long will the size of container ships continue to grow? For Italy a market of opportunities and variables is taking shape and this will dictate radical logistics choices”.

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With this short report begins the process of investigating the ports of the countries in competition with Italy. The first country analysed within this process is Germany, which given its geographical features and export vocation, attaches strategic value to logistics and to the maritime trading of goods, as confirmed by the World Bank, which ranks Germany second in the world for logistics competitiveness, just behind Singapore.The results achieved are the fruit of the major efforts made by Germany over the years to support the development of the sector, also through the construction of the port of Hamburg and of the Frankfurt airport, which have made the country the most important logistics hub in Europe.

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China has gradually become a big energy and resource user in the global scale into the 20th century. China’s iron ore and coal imports are taking rapidly rising shares in global seaborne trade, with “China factors” getting predominant for determining the global dry bulk market. In recent years, the shipping industry has been suffering, and China’s dry bulk shipping market is also changing quietly. This article analyzes the changes of China factors and the resulting impact on the global shipping market from perspectives of industrial chain structures of various cargoes.

The research is available only in the English version.

This paper is extracted from the SRM’s 6th “Italian Maritime Economy” Report .

This short report – edited by Confitarma – describes the situation of the world and Italian maritime shipping in 2015. The analysis pays attention to the seaborne trade, the shipping and maritime markets.

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Global alliances have become a dominant feature of container shipping. They are cooperation agreements between container lines (carriers) on operational matters. Alliances usually consist of a series of agreements with global coverage on sharing vessels and slots on these vessels. The aim of such alliances is to achieve economies of scale and wider service coverage.
Whereas the early generations of global alliances that emerged in the mid-1990s pro-vided a vehicle for cooperation between smaller carriers, alliances are nowadays co-operation tools for the largest container lines: the three global alliances (2M, Ocean and THE Alliance) that are operational since April 2017 regroup the eight largest con-tainer carriers of the world.
The research is available only in the English version.

This paper is extracted from the SRM’s 6th “Italian Maritime Economy” Report .

In the attempt to capture the emissions of the total transport chain, the reduction of carbon footprint in ports and at terminals was the principal goal of the EU-funded project “Green and effective operations at terminals and in ports (GREEN EFFORTS)” concluded in June 2014. As the carbon footprint is directly related to energy-efficiency, which is easier to sell to the industry, this was advanced into the project focus. The project results are briefly described referring to yard lighting, standby consumption of ship-to-shore cranes, energy management, yard operation and standardization. Particulate matter emission as a serious threat to human health is not a contributor to the carbon footprint but has been included to advocate a combined approach to reduce all industrial emissions and to improve air quality.

The report was carried out by Jens Froese,
Jacobs University Bremen, Head of Workgroup Maritime Logistics.

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The importance of ports for the Spanish economy can be inferred from the fact that over 60% of exports and 85% are seaborne; these figures exceed 90% when considering trade with countries outside the European Union. The activities related to the port sector directly contribute to the country’s economy being 1.8% of the Spanish GDP and provide an annual gross value added of over 9 billion euros which, if we take into account the indirect and induced effects, doubles and rises to 18 billion euro (Ministerio de Fomento, January 2014).To this it must be added the 100,000 direct jobs generated by the Spanish ports and the additional 175,000 indirect jobs.
The Spanish port system is regulated by the “Ley de Puertos” of 2010, which recognised 28 Port Authorities which manage a total amount of 46 ports of general interest, with considerable autonomy in the pursuit of their own economic and strategic objectives.

The report (English and Italian version) may be purchased from this website in digital version, at a discounted price.