Transhipment hubs have proved to be valuable for container lines and their customers to manage the movement of volumes during the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, but senior port and shipping executives remain cautious on the outlook for 2021.
Speakers on the Seatrade Maritime News webinar “The future
of transhipment hubs post-pandemic”, sponsored by Colon Container Terminal
(CCT) and Saam Towage dusted off their crystal balls to try and see what the
future holds in an uncertain economic outlook.
While transhipment hubs may have enjoyed a higher proportion
of volumes in 2020 versus import/export ports, Lars Ostergaard Nielsen, Head of
Americas Liner Operations Cluster, Maersk, cautioned that this did not
necessarily mean the total number of transhipment moves had gone up, given
lower volumes as whole.
This was borne out by the comments of terminal operators SSA
International and CCT.
Stephen Shaffer, President of CCT noted that it would depend
on the performance of the spoke economies that hubs such as terminals in Panama
serve. “Coming off of a low base this year for some economies they may have a
bounce back which will see some uptick in volumes but maybe not to the 2019
levels of growth in consumption,” he said.
Taking a similar view was Carlos Urriola, President of SSA
International & President of Manzanillo International Terminal - Panama,
S.A. (MIT). “We don’t think we will be back to 2019 levels next year, I think
there will be a trend to recover some of the volumes but I don’t think we will
be able to grow at the level of this year,” he said.
“We have to be extremely careful not be over optimistic that
we will be having greater volumes because we have to see that the economy
recovers.”
Urriola noted there were a lot of variables at play such as
the large increase in volumes currently being seen into the US West Coast.
Shaffer also commented this trend saying, “We have a lot of
growth in the US market for this region, but at some point that plays itself
out and you get back to a more stable condition. Right now I would look to the
spokes and the Latin American market for this region it definitely has some
challenges ahead – it has not been an easy time.”
Looking to the shipping line side of the equation Nielsen
from Maersk said a trend of lines favouring the utilisation of their larger
tonnage was set to continue in an effort to manage unit cost.
“Being in a low margin industry we’re constantly having to
look for opportunities to drive down our production cost, and of course making
the best use of larger tonnage is a help, and that lends itself to
transhipment,” he explained.
“I think we continue to see people trying make use of the
bigger tonnage in their fleets.”
Seatrade — 12 Nov 2020