Everyone dealing with shipping knows much about Rotterdam: first transhipment port in Europe, far-looking management, almost ninety km quay length, and so on…
These two days of full immersion anyway gave your correspondent the chance of having an inside look at ‘Planet Rotterdam’: let me say that for someone grown in Genoa (and near its port) it’s a well strange world.
ECT Delta Container Terminal
A different world in which workers don’t go on strike if a colleague hurts himself for not respecting safety procedures; where you can cross the road in terminals without risking your life because truckers drive well below speed limits etc.
A place where a small community let part of its terrains to the ‘forceful’ Port Authority only after having obtained ‘environmental insulation’ and an invisible pipeline (plus small lakes and wildlife too!).
Differently on ‘Earth Italy’ private companies often dwell in Port Committees only to vote against resolutions disturbing (not necessarily for real) their business. While over there, the big dog (Rotterdam) sits with the small one (Amsterdam) and listen to its directions: ‘it’s good to collaborate but only with no political interference at all’.
Palm oil and brand new, shiny biodiesel plants are rising among the most huge refineries in Europe. Suddenly, a € 1.4 billion E-on electrical biomass (and coal) plant pops-up.
A few 9.000 Teus containerships waiting patiently their turn queued. You take a picture of one of them arriving at Maasvlakte in the morning and at mid-afternoon you find it under the deep-sea cranes.
Look! A small Russian crude-oil tankers community over there.
You can smell the strangeness all around you.
In Rail Service Center, where Managing Director Cor Hoenders told us that even though its Company has targeted 350.000 teus for 2010-2011 and 20% market share in 2035 (we’re now at 14%) it will quietly agree to DB Schenker directions in no longer being the single shareholder in 2014, ending date of concession.
In ECT Delta Terminal, where all the 3.000 ‘inhabitants’ (and also management) has primarily one belief: ‘license to operate‘ which means you have the Licence, then it’s also your responsibility to deal at your best effort with networks, sustainability, innovation, environment, safety, jobs preservation and then go squeezing the terminal for superior performances.
While in our own world (read ‘Italian ports’) future troughput numbers for tenders are very often fancy exercising, generated numbers and troughput – 100 barges/week, 24/7 operations, 3 operators per Crane, operations up to 10 knots wind, 265 automated guided vehicles, 137 automated stacking cranes, performing with snowy weather, biometric pass for truckers, etc. – clearly state what mentioned above. Their piece de resistance is called European Gateway Services (EGS), a ‘one-stop shop’ system offering shipping lines, forwarders and transport companies several services to foster containers flows between deep-sea terminals and European hinterland.
Quite forgetting about it! On planet Rotterdam they’ve got a ‘New Frontier’ too! A land of sand and water that in 2033 will make the planet 20% bigger and 57.000 sea-going ships per year put in at the port thanks to a (estimate) generous € 2.9 billion injection.
Quoting (à la ship2shore) a famous rock group of the 60’s: ‘What a short strange trip has been’.