Sustainable Logistics. This means logistics that aim to offer the service and economical conditions demanded by the market, at the same time seeking all the most appropriate solutions from the environmental and mobility point of view, connected with the transport, delivery and recycling of products and goods. Sustainable Logistics seeks, finally, to promote more efficient logistics that are, at the same time, more respectful of the quality of life. We spoke about this issue with Daniele Testi, President of SOS-LOGistica (Association for Sustainable Logistics).

Ports, terminals, infrastructural projects, and economic forecasts are some of the topics covered in this interview with Paul Valery Spallino, Trade and Sales Manager (Italy) Seago Line, a company of the Maersk Group specialized in intra-Europe trade, which includes the areas of Mediterranean and Black Sea.

Ignazio Messina & C. is a shipping company established in 1921, head quartered in Genoa with branches in Modena, Naples and other cities in Europe and worldwide, it is currently owned by the Messina and Gais families. This interview with Vincenzo Re – Line Manager Middle East Area Ignazio Messina & C. –  outlines the company’s profile, its lines of development and the role of Italy, with its opportunities and its challenges, in the company’s growth strategies.

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.

In the last twenty years, globalization has fostered a progressive fragmentation of production, making transport and logistics a strategic field. Until now, road has played the lion part in European transport system, leading to a modal unbalancing. This has produced an increase in negative externalities and variable cost, questioning this solution for inland connections. The European Union indicates a modal shift in favor of sea-rail transport as a possible solution. Therefore, quality and efficiency of sea and rail services, to be competitive, should be the same of road solution. Notwithstanding general acceptance of sea-rail advantages, this solution is not common in European markets, in the case of Italy it is still rare and even ignored by public institutions and academia. This paper aims at studying sea-rail intermodal transport in Ro-Ro market and assessing the competitiveness of Trieste port in the European scenario. The result is achieved through a performance index estimation, based on the principle components analysis (PCA), that ranks the relative position of each Ro-Ro-Rail seaport. Trieste case study is reviewed also to learn from its success and to find critical factors for sea-rail implementation projects in the Italian and European context.

The paper is available in the english version.

This paper (Italian version) gives the first empirical results of an ongoing research on the dynamics of the European port labour in comparative perspective. Starting from the analysis of the documentation obtained through the use of qualitative methods in the port of Genoa, the article focuses on the relationship between the role of the actors who control large segments of the supply chains and their ability to shape the structure of the port labour. The proven strategies of the major market players, in the pursuit of economies of scale in the context of global supply chains, produce pressure on the port of Genoa, which would alter not only the technical configuration of the terminal, but the functioning of the labor pool itself, constrained in the use of external resources. The flexibility processes generated by the merger of trade sanction a shift that calls into question the role of institutional constraints with respect to the port performance and the European port labor systems. In the light of a comparison with the port of Antwerp, this paper provides a recognition of the theoretical framework necessary to interpret the behaviour of port actors and to assess the existence of beneficial constraints both for port actors and for the contractual system of port labour.

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The paper highlights the role of China in maritime traffics and logistics of the Widened Med Countries. The Mediterranean Basin, in fact, is becoming increasingly strategic for the Asian giant, as evidently showed by the analysis of the investment plans of China in the Med Area. More in general, the Asian giant plans to establish a new “Silk Road”, both maritime and on rail, with the objective of promoting its role in global trade, of integrating more the Euro-Asian markets and of finding new openings for its productions. The impact that this great project is going to have on the port system and the logistics of the Mediterranean and Italy is going to be massive: it is going to inevitably favour those Countries that are able to offer high port efficiency and cutting edge logistics; this represents an important challenge for Italy.

This paper is extracted from the SRM’s 6th Annual Report on “Economic relations between Italy and the Mediterranean area – November 2016″.

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