LA SPEZIA – The port of La Spezia today comes out into the open and launches an appeal to other ports from the North Tyrrhenian Sea, from Carrara to Savona, for a joint strategy and operational collaboration that will allow the defense of existing traffic, the development of new ones and the protection of interests of the country’s productive economy. This in a moment of absolute emergency determined primarily by the situation of international tension which penalizes the Mediterranean and therefore the Italian port system, but also by the inevitable consequences of the intensive plan for the construction of new port infrastructures which will impact the Ligurian arc system, with open construction sites and the risk of a loss of efficiency.
“As always – states Mario Sommariva, president of the Port System Authority of the eastern Ligurian Sea – the ports have not collaborated, they fight each other and lose the real comparison, which is the one with the ports of Northern Europe. Today in an alert situation, La Spezia, thanks to the successful experience of real coordination and integration with Carrara, launches an offer of concrete collaboration firstly in Genoa and Savona, to present itself on the market as a coordinated system that has in logistics, in the railways and in the offer of services also supplementary to the difficulties of others, its winning key”. An unprecedented move, this one, announced at the conclusion of the conference which took place this morning at the headquarters of the Port System Authority in La Spezia. A move resulting from the consensus and indications of the Mercitalia company, represented by the CEO Sabrina De Filippis, but also from the consensus clearly expressed during today’s event, albeit from different points of view and with different facets by all the major operators in the maritime, port and logistics sector.
The conference actually gave voice to what – as underlined by Salvatore Avena, representing the Port Community of La Spezia – was a major flaw in the Italian planning of new infrastructures and which today has become an emergency: coordinating, outside of parochialism and provincialism, the great infrastructural choices with the actual demand of the country’s productive and industrial apparatus. “And the response – as reiterated by the general secretary of the Port System Authority of the eastern Ligurian Sea, Federica Montaresi – passes through a system response which today “is no longer a slogan, but rather a binding necessity to rationally spend resources and to place major works and, first and foremost, ports at the service of the demand that arises from the country’s economic system, also leaving behind obsolete mental and cultural patterns. In the case of Liguria, coordinating and not contrasting the efforts of La Spezia and Carrara with those of Genoa and Savona which in the coming years will have to face the operational impact of the construction sites for the construction of large works”.
“It is time – confirmed Paolo Pessina, president of Assagenti – to overcome the conflicts and launch a major territorial marketing operation, especially among industry, both Italian and otherwise, the real image of a port system in the Tyrrhenian arc (today handles just under 60% of the containers in the country system) capable of responding to the demand for services with coordinated and efficient logistics”. A project that inevitably must pass through a bath of realism and concreteness, invoked by the president of Assarmatori, Stefano Messina, who underlined the importance of the port communities also in the relationship with the large international maritime transport companies; then by Matthieu Gasselin, CEO of Contship Italia Group, who confirmed the unblocking of his Group’s investment plan on the port of La Spezia, in a market that must plan its investments for twenty years and which obviously suffers from the current situation of uncertainty .
Almost thirty years after the boom of Contship led by Angelo Ravano, La Spezia – and this was forcefully underlined by the president of the freight forwarders Alessandro Laghezza – is growing again and is doing so not by chance in a complex moment in which great flexibility and reliability, also in the perspective of being a truly integral part of a logistics offer system that includes the entire Ligurian Sea and Carrara, protagonist for its part – as revealed by Michele Giromini – of a record growth in intra-Mediterranean traffic. The “ghost” of Pontremoli also hovered over the entire conference, the railway work essential to connect the port of La Spezia with its natural market in Emilia Romagna “a work – as underlined by the President of the province of Parma Andrea Massari – which had been conceived by Cavour and which today more than ever is a symbol of the validity of a pioneering choice”. Massari himself, in announcing with satisfaction the approval of the new law on interports by a branch of Parliament, also underlined how logistics “is not free” and is instead a component of the production process. The conclusions of the conference, carried out by Pierpaolo Ribuffo, Admiral who has recently become the coordinator of Cipom, the inter-ministerial body responsible for putting an end to conflicts of competence between ministries and implementing a maritime policy in the real interest of the country, are not accidental. Interest – underlined Ribuffo – which can only be achieved through the concreteness that was hoped for by the secretary Montaresi and by an effective interface between the port and productive and industrial activities.
Mayor Arrighi’s speech
And among those present there was also the mayor of Carrara, Serena Arrighi. We report her speech below.
«Good morning everyone and thank you for the invitation to participate in this important moment of sharing and reflection on our ports, or rather, on our port because the ports of La Spezia and Marina di Carrara are now to all intents and purposes one large a reality capable of responding to different and diversified traffic and needs. I would like to underline this which is now a consolidated reality above all for two reasons: because it was absolutely not a given that this cohabitation would work so well when it was created and because if it has worked so well it is thanks to the great work done in recent years by the Authority of the port system of the eastern Ligurian Sea, by its workers, by its managers, by President Sommariva and by those who preceded him.
Furthermore, to certify what I have just said, there are numbers that speak clearly. Since it was established, this port system authority has been synonymous with growth and development for the entire territory: since the merger between the port authorities of Marina di Carrara and La Spezia, both ports have benefited both from an organizational and a traffic which in the city of Carrara has grown exponentially and all this has been possible because it has been possible to exploit a new synergy between the territories and even between the offices.
As mayor of Carrara, my hope is that, under the guidance of the Port System Authority, this synergy will continue to grow and develop more and more and that the entire territory will be able to face the great challenges that await us as a single and cohesive entity. Among these, one of the most important is certainly that of the new master plan for the port of Marina di Carrara, a fundamental document that our port has been awaiting for 43 years and which can no longer be postponed. The new master plan represents a bridge towards the future that we must all travel together, it represents, we must all be aware of it, a guarantee of development both for Carrara and for La Spezia and for this reason we are all called, each according to our own skills and prerogatives, to do everything possible to ensure that the process for final approval ends positively”.
Tags: Porto revolutionary proposal logistics Spezia Arrighi Carrara grown lot prp
