ABB Ports’ Eye on the Container Shipping Industry – Uno Bryfors

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• published: 06 Mar 2018
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Uno Bryfors, Senior Vice President of ABB Ports, presents his view on how and why the container handling industry is changing. In the first part of his interview on the London Eye, Bryfors explains what the future will hold after the major container shipping developments of 2017. Bryfors is one of the most experienced professionals in the ports industry today. During his career of more than three decades at ABB he has been driving the development of automation solutions for cargo handling. Watch another PTI video interview with Bryfors, filmed in 2014, where he accurately made forecasts on why the number of ship calls at ports would fall: http://bit.ly/2I4IsOk Video transcript: “2017 was the year of change in container shipping. What is now the impact on the container handling industry? I believe the main factors are mega-sizing, consolidation, and terminal volumes. It is important to keep an eye on the industry. We are now in the mega-age. We are talking about mega-container lines, -alliances, -ships, -ports, -terminals and cranes. The main mega driver is containerships. They are now getting very big relative to most trades. The alliances have been handling this so far, but the shippers require decent frequencies, so we are coming to the limit. By gradual optimization of ship designs, more TEUs have been squeezed into more or less the same overall dimensions. But if exceeding the new triple 24 by 24 base, the 24 wide and 12 plus 12 high, we will see that big investments are required in the whole transport system. While the shipping line consolidation has come very far by now, but not reached the limit, terminal consolidation has not really taken off. Terminal consolidation will take time as it is more on regional and local level. This will be seen as a shake out of terminals which are less productive, having higher cost per container and less capacity. The question is this is going to be handled by the terminal operators or be driven by the shipping lines and shippers. Digitalization ties container logistics much tighter now to the global logistics environment. It’s really not so special anymore. In worldwide logistics, consolidation is driven by big shippers like retailers, ecommerce and big manufacturers. In one-and-a-half years, we can see container volumes increasing and the automated terminals are growing and taking market share. Terminals will be forced to be on their toes accepting a lower number of calls by bigger ships and requiring higher peak capacity and still with less money per move. This is felt especially just now as we’ve seen more deliveries of large ships than ever before and this means cascading of 13-16,000 TEU ships into several new trades. The result will be less terminals but bigger and much more automated. Terminal operators are more cautious today, are more focusing on investing in existing terminals, optimizing them instead of investing in greenfield projects. We are at the age of expansion and re-equipment. Most of the terminals in operation today will be in operation 20 years from now. Terminals are expanded by adding more land, by taking out non-core activities and also by merging with their neighbours. Bigger calls means that yard capacity and especially density must increase and this is achieved by replacing RTGs and straddle carriers by automatic stacking cranes, so re-equipping terminals is not just by bigger ship to shore cranes, but also much bigger and automated and intermodal yard cranes.” Get more PTI: Official Site: http://bit.ly/PortTechOfficial Facebook: http://bit.ly/FBPortTech Twitter: http://bit.ly/PortTechTwitter LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/PortTechLinkedIn Published four times a year, Port Technology is the only technical journal reviewing and previewing advanced technologies for ports and terminals across the globe. Each edition features over 30 technical papers written by leading industry professionals, which reflect emerging trends and technical advances that enhance efficiency and increase productivity in ports and terminals.