1. 6 Focus Ports & Logistics Lloyd’s List MONDAY MAY 18, 2009
Lloyd Fonds
seeks to
unlock the
ports industry
THE decision by German KG ship finan-
cier Lloyd Fonds to become a 30% share-
holder in a company developing an auto-
matic lashing device came somewhat as a
surprise. Not only is the KG house under
pressure itself because of investors shying
away from putting money in shipping
funds. The investment in Kalp also is not
really Lloyd Fonds’ core business.
Not that the idea of the lashing device
sounds unconvincing. While new twist
locks are locking automatically once the
boxes are piled up, they have to be
attached and removed by hand before and
afterwards — an activity that regularly
leads to accidents. The device which Kalp
is developing is said to attach, remove and
store the twist locks automatically. A pro-
totype is scheduled for October.
But for Lloyd Fonds chief executive
Torsten Teichert it is not only an invest-
ment in a company that will hopefully pay
off some time. “It is partly a normal invest-
ment but also a door opener to the port
industry,” he said. Port operators have so
far not used equity collected by KG houses
for their investments. In line with his
belief that in future equity will be of a
much higher value than in the boom years
before the crisis, Mr Teichert hopes that a
new market could open up for KG compa-
nies financing whole terminals, or at least
gantry cranes.
But it will not be easy for KG houses to
get a foothold in the port business. Port
operators rely on governments, which play
an important role by guaranteeing fund-
ing for infrastructure. They also depend
on complex approval procedures. Euro-
gate could tell you a thing or two about it.
Europe’s largest port operator suffered a
delay in construction of the third berth as
the group had to wait for approval by the
Hamburg Port Authority.
In addition, investments in port facili-
ties usually include higher investment vol-
umes than those needed for a ship. This
seems to be the reason why attempts of
KG houses to get a grip on the port indus-
try never worked out. But this does not
mean that Lloyd Fonds cannot make a
deal out of its investment.
Logged In Patrick
Hagen
Ports & Logistics appears
every Monday, edited
by Roger Hailey
roger.hailey@informa.com
020 7017 4361
www.lloydslist.com/logistics
Duo bid for Aqaba expansion
A 30-year concession to build a multipur-
pose port at Aqaba in Jordan has moved
into its final tendering stage, with two
potential bidders expected to present their
proposals for the estimated $700m gov-
ernment contract next month.
UK-based port and shipping consul-
tancy BMT Baxter Eadie has completed an
in-depth study on the greenfield Middle
East port in the Gulf of Aqaba on the
southern tip of Jordan, set to open in 2012.
BMT Baxter Eadie has assessed future
traffic volumes at the facility, which will be
located to the south of the current port, on
behalf of the AYLA New Port Consortium.
The consortium, which includes Jordan
Dubai Energy and Infrastructure,
Bouygues Travaux Publics and Louis
Dreyfus Armitage, is preparing a bid to
design, build and operate the new port
under a 30-year public-private partner-
ship with the Jordanian government.
The other remaining bidder is KGL
Investment of Kuwait.
The current Port of Aqaba, which has a
total throughput of around 17m tonnes, is
Jordan’s only sea port and is within 20 km
of Egypt, Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The location is part of a 17 km coastal
strip along the Gulf of Aqaba that was
granted to Jordan as part of a neighbourly
land exchange with Saudi Arabia in the
1960s. Jordan now wants to relocate some
port facilities away from Aqaba town cen-
tre so that it can attract more tourism to
the area.
The Jordanian authorities are hoping
the new port, which will have facilities for
general cargo and ro-ro ferries, will
improve trade with its neighbours.
The original four consortia interested in
the project now number two.
APM Terminals operates a container
hub at Aqaba under a 25-year government
concession at the southern tip of Aqaba.
The proposed multi-purpose hub will be
next door to Aqaba Container Terminal,
which last month signed a contract for two
ZPMC ship-to-shore gantry cranes, to be
operational in the first quarter of 2010.
BMT Baxter Eadie managing director
Dick Scott Kerr said the multipurpose hub
will handle a range of cargoes, such as
steel, livestock, wood product, grain,
bagged sugar and rice. The existing Aqaba
port is split, north to south, into three
facilities — the main port, the middle port
and the industrial port.
It is the functions of the main port that
will switch to the new south port area. The
container and ferry operations at the mid-
dle port will stay where they are, although
there is a provision — unlikely to be
enacted in the near future — for this traffic
to transfer to the south port at a later date.
The industrial port, which handles bulk
liquids and related traffic, will not be
moved.
Mr Scott Kerr said the four-berth south
port development is aimed at Jordanian
gateway traffic and transit cargo for Iraq.
One factor in the forecast equation
looking 30 years ahead is the influence of
Syrian ports as possible competitors, as
highlighted in a recent study by the Euro-
pean Union.
The majority of Jordan’s population is
located near Amman, to the north of the
country, and thus within trucking reach,
for domestic traffic, of Syria’s eastern Med-
iterranean ports.
Asked whether the current global
downturn will affect the tendering proc-
ess, Mr Scott Kerr said: “The ports indus-
try is facing a short-term hiccup, with vol-
umes down by up to 20%.
“But any port investment is based on a
30- to 50-year lifespan of the project. If
you ignore the short-term picture, I have
no reason to believe that this port devel-
opment will not be utilised.”
BMT Baxter Eadie was involved in the
Pusan New Port container terminal
project in South Korea and is working on a
European Union-funded project assessing
the potential of Black Sea ports. It is also
working on a project related to a port in
the Irish Republic.
Final two bidders prepare tenders for 30-year
contract to manage extension to Jordan port
Roger Hailey
Challenging
issues on UK
ports policy
THE Waterfront Conference Company is
organising an event that will address UK
ports policy at a time when the global
e conomy is in dow ntu r n and as
Westminster MPs frame a new National
Policy Statement.
UK Ports Policy: The Challenges Facing
the Government and the Industry will take
place on July 7, at Eversheds in central
London.
Confirmed speakers at the conference
include Lord Greenway, vice-chair of the
cross-party parliamentary maritime
group, and Richard Bennett, head of the
ports division at the Department for
Transport.
Other speakers are Rail Freight Group
chairman Lord Berkeley, Milford Haven
Port Authority chief executive Ted
Sangster and Mark Bookham of Wallenius
Wilhelmsen Logistics.
Items on the agenda include:
• the government’s policy towards ports in
a recession;
• issues facing ports in an economic
downturn;
• the impact of light dues policy on the
industry;
• developing a national policy statement
for ports;
• the implications of coastal access for
port developments.
Registrations start from £199 plus VAT.
F u l l d e t a i l s a r e a v a i l a b l e a t
www.eventsforce.net/portspolicy or
phone +44 20 7787 1210.
Green principles grow amid recession
GREEN logistics solutions will remain a
high priority for most companies even in
the economic downturn, delegates at a
dry port conference in Bruges were told.
“Environmental discussion and envi-
ronmental demands are here to stay,” said
project manager Dirk Harmsen, repre-
senting Sweden’s Region Västra Götaland,
the lead partner in the European Union
Dryport project.
“In many ways, the recession is giving
companies time to reflect on their trans-
port and logistics operations, and the feel-
ing is that they are still looking for green
solutions.”
The three-year, €4.8m ($6.5m) Dryport
project is looking at the role that dry ports,
or hinterland intermodal freight transport
hubs, can play in maximising the capacity
and efficiency of sea ports, while also
moving traffic off the roads on to rail or
inland waterways.
As part of the programme, partners are
looking at monitoring carbon dioxide
effects and the integration of dry ports
into the Motorways of the Sea concept.
Among those addressing the Bruges
conference was Patrick Installé, managing
director of Belgian coffee and cocoa mer-
chant Efico, which is investing €30m in a
dedicated eco-friendly European coffee
processing, warehouse and distribution
facility at the Port of Zeebrugge, which is
one of the Dryport partners.
Efico’s ‘CO₂-compensated green coffee
supply chain’ includes covering the roof of
the rail-linked centre with photovoltaic
modules to generate energy, and plans for
five wind turbines to offset carbon emis-
sions from the transport of coffee.
“The important message is that Efico
chose Zeebrugge because of its possibili-
ties,” said Mr Harmsen. “It wanted a port
that met its environmental criteria and
thinking. Companies want to find low-
carbon ways to handle cargo.
“This confirms that we have to work on
modal shift from roads to rail and inland
waterways, and we need to express that
shift in clear figures.”
The conference was jointly organised by
the Port of Zeebrugge and the West Flan-
ders chambers of commerce. Other part-
ners in the Dryport project include the
Port of Gothenburg, the UK’s Haven Gate-
way, the Transport Research Institute at
Napier University and the South East Scot-
land Transport Partnership, Harlingen
Seaport and the municipalities of Emmen
and Coevorden in the Netherlands.
The two-day gathering included a site
assessment seminar at which partners dis-
cussed ways of identifying where a dry
port site should be.
One concern was how anyone could be
sure that a dry port developed now would
still be considered a “hub” in three, four or
five years’ time.
“Investors or infrastructure planners
need to know a bit more than one-year
planning,” said Mr Harmsen. “They want
to make sure that any investment in
waterways or railways is an investment
that will last and that the market will not
then decide to go this way instead of that.”
Hinterland connections were vital, he
said. “In essence, dry ports, are something
that you can steer towards and work for.
You can never be certain where transat-
lantic cargo will land, for example, but you
can make preconditions so that it will
work.”
Felicity Landon
Agility claims a gain in market share
AGILITY Logistics is gaining market share
from its competitors in a move that coin-
cides with what it thought was a stabilisa-
tion in the logistics market, writes Keith
Wallis in Hong Kong.
Pointing to the rise in market share,
Agility chief strategy and marketing officer
Christopher Logan said revenue from the
global integrated logistics business
dropped 13.8% to Dinars244.8m ($845m)
in the first quarter of this year compared
with Dinars283.9m a year earlier. Compa-
nies, including Panalpina, have posted
much bigger revenue falls.
“Clearly our revenue decline is much
less than the market decline so we are def-
initely gaining market share. We are quite
optimistic in what will be a difficult year
for everybody,” he said.
He added: “Volumes are down, reve-
nues are down, but it’s not getting worse.”
Agility was “cautiously optimistic”
about prospects for the coming months,
but it was also “maintaining the position
the global economy could go either way”,
Mr Logan said.
He added that the slight buoyancy in
current market conditions would repre-
sent either the “shoots of recovery or a
dead cat bounce”.
Mr Logan said the company had seen “a
large increase in requests for proposals,
many from customers that we have not
previously worked with before” as cus-
tomers now favoured logistics companies
with strong balance sheets.
He said the boom in proposal requests
was across all of Agility’s main sectors
including high-tech, retail and consumer
goods and automotive. “Sometimes it
involves a wholesale jump with a cus-
tomer changing logistics provider, or a
change in multiple providers with custom-
ers including us and dropping another
company,” Mr Logan added. He was com-
menting after Agility opened an Asia
Pacific headquarters in Singapore to com-
plement its existing headquarters opera-
tion in Hong Kong.
Agility chairman and managing director
Tarek Sultan said the company continued
to look for opportunities to expand. He
said these include “game changing”
acquisitions that could see Agility jump
from seventh to third or fourth place in
the world’s largest logistics companies.
Agility Asia Pacific chief executive Wolf-
gang Hollermann said the company had
$1bn to finance acquisitions and had
teams in Laos and Cambodia to study
opportunities. “We have to be careful. We
have to deal with the recession, but look
for opportunities. We will be rather oppor-
tunistic. If a company is in distress and the
multiples are right it might be the time for
us to step in,” he said.
GAC Marine Logistics has transported
a 7.5 m diameter propeller, pictured,
from Kobe, Japan, for ship operator
Atlantic Bulk Carriers Management.
As part of the same supply chain
project, GML moved a 9 m shaft,
weighing 13 tonnes, from Pusan, South
Korea.
GML was entrusted with the entire
operation, from receiving the shaft and
28 tonne propeller from the suppliers,
through to fitting the shaft to the propel-
ler before placing them in long-term
storage in Singapore.
A team of Wärtsilä technicians was
flown in for the fitting.
Heavy load
GML shifts
shaft and
propeller