In the first months of 2024 the port of Livorno recorded a significant decline in traffic and the president of the Port System Authority of the Northern Tyrrhenian Sea, Luciano Guerrieri, wants to chart the course for the future of Tuscan ports by focusing on “more infrastructure and last mile; new cooperation strategies in the Mediterranean area and greater territorial synergies”. The opportunity to take stock of the economic situation and the impact it is having on maritime transport was the Management Committee and the Partnership Body, a meeting also extended to include the regional councilor for productive activities, Leonardo Marras, and the municipal councilor for ports, Barbara Bonciani.
“The Red Sea crisis was only the latest in a series of systemic crises that have hit the maritime industry in recent years, putting stress on the entire logistics chain and, with it, the logic of just in time, which favored globalization processes until 2020” stated Guerrieri. Who then underlined how the consequences of the substantial blockade of Suez are now clear for all to see: “More and more ships are lengthening the route towards the Cape of Good Hope to avoid passing through the Strait of Bab al-Mandab, the extension of journeys it resulted in a delay in the arrival of ships and in some cases in a clear drop in traffic, as recorded by many Italian ports”.
The port authority says that the Livorno airport “has not been significantly impacted by this situation, if not limited to the traffic of new cars coming from the Far East, a market segment in which there has not been a real decline but an increase inconvenience due to the delayed delivery of vehicles”. However, the president of the Livorno ADSP himself does not intend to minimize the impact that the crisis has had on the production system and on consumption: “There is no doubt – he says – that the ports of the Upper Tyrrhenian Sea are experiencing a moment of suffering, equally of the other Italian ports”.
Guerrieri cites the traffic data (still provisional) for the first quarter of 2024 to support his thesis: “Between January and March – he explains – the port of Livorno recorded a general decline in almost all types of traffic, starting with containers, forest products and new cars. The only positive exceptions are represented by rolling stock and passenger traffic.”
Negative effects can also be seen on employment in the port: “In the first quarter of 2024, job starts for port company workers decreased by 8.6% compared to the same period of the previous year (from 57,427 to 52,447)”. It follows that “no port can emerge unscathed from an international context in which economic and unpredictable crises follow one another with the same regularity with which day alternates with night” explains Guerrieri. “Faced with a complex and at times worrying international picture, it is therefore necessary to implement various initiatives to seize new development opportunities, also in view of the updating of the new Three-Year Operational Plan of the Port Authority, which will probably be presented at the end June”.
“The development of infrastructure remains a priority – says the first tenant of Palazzo Rosciano – the AdSP has built 13 infrastructure projects in this period and another 25 projects are about to go to tender”. There is not only the Darsena Europa on the horizon: “We need additional resources to develop the new areas of competence of ports, which go beyond the maritime logic in the strict sense: energy sustainability and digital transition are two central themes on which the port authority is working with strong determination. We do not believe it is unlikely that with the rotation of institutional positions in Brussels, new financing possibilities will open up for the development of projects in the port-logistics sector, along the lines of what we saw with the Next-Gen Eu”.
Another strategic theme is that of cooperation with non-EU Mediterranean countries according to Guerrierio: “At a global level, nearshoring and reshoring processes have long since begun to represent a valid response to the vulnerabilities of supply chains. The relocation of factories and suppliers to countries closer to Europe, and often friends, is benefiting economies close to the most important markets, such as Morocco, Egypt and Turkey. It therefore becomes essential to establish greater relationships with these countries and develop a foreign port policy that allows us to adapt to the new industrial chains that will arise”. The president admits that it is precisely on this terrain that the ADSP intends to play its most important game: “In June we will make an agreement with the port of Damietta. The objective is to begin to weave our network of relations with the Maghreb countries”.
This is a game to be played in tandem with another, that of the logistical and intermodal development of the port system. From this point of view, if on the one hand Guerrieri underlines the strategic importance of the Scalalco, a fundamental work that will allow for a direct connection, reserved for freight trains, between the port of Livorno and the Vespucci Interporto, on the other hand he hopes that the process of establishing the ZLS in Tuscany must be concluded as soon as possible, a “fundamental step to relaunch the territory and a topic on which an overall reasoning must be made to understand what incentives must be put in place to attract new production facilities”.
In its small way, the Tuscan port authority is trying to do its part: “If at a national level the Ferrobonus and the Marebonus represent a programmatic response to the critical issues of an Italian logistics system strongly characterized by the prevalent use of road modes compared to more eco-friendly modes of transport -sustainable such as the railway and sea routes, the ADSP has developed a sort of Maneuver Bonus for the benefit of the railway operators of the port and interport system. It is a drop in the ocean – says Guerrieri – but overall, these actions represent a concrete impulse to increase the integration and sustainability of the rail-sea-road logistics chain and thus reposition the entire logistics system on more competitive levels local”.
At the same time, new spaces and areas must be found for the development of intermodality: «The Vespucci Interport – adds the president – needs further logistics areas to perfect its vocation as a logistics hub serving its port of reference».
