A ship from the One company, the Endowment, arrives today in the port of Taranto, at the Yilport container terminal, to load approximately 1,200 full containers, unloaded two days ago by a CMA unit, the Haris. It is not a marginal activity, considering that it refers to a single ship.
The two units, the one that unloaded the containers and the one that loaded them, belong to the Femex 1 service. And this week another Cma ship, the Joanna, handled another 550 containers.
Yilport’s manager
So, is anything moving in the terminal? «Today’s arrival – Alessandro Becce, general manager of Yilport since February, explains to Quotidiano – is certainly an opportunity that has arisen and that we are serving, but it is a spot call. That is, it is not a service that calls Taranto on a stable basis. It is a need that the Cma had. For the moment, therefore, these are still spot issues, since to be able to establish a role for the terminal in transshipment, we must have dredging. Until we can demonstrate that there is a dredge in operation, it will still be difficult to convince the companies.”
«We are working to do the dredging in autumn – announces Becce -. There is a problem with the sealing of the reservoir which the Port Authority is solving. We are in the executive phase. We are no longer talking about hypotheses but about operational plans to have, by the beginning of 2025, dredging started with at least one approach brought to a seabed depth of 16 metres. The dredging must be done along the entire extent of the quay, but the fact that it begins could radically change things with the market. It’s what helps us have credibility with our customers.”
The budget
Taking stock of the first three months of activity, Becce declares that «the Yilport group is pushing with all its energy to try to put Taranto back at the center of the Mediterranean. However, what happened with Evergreen is incontrovertible. With the dynamics of new ships, which are increasingly larger, any company that intends to use Taranto for transshipment cannot ignore a perspective that guarantees the right seabed. Unfortunately, the Evergreen affair has not left a good image in the world. With ships with a 16 meter draft, a company cannot bring a 13 meter vessel and perhaps say let’s wait, then in the future the 16 meter ones will also be able to dock in Taranto. Companies must have the possibility to carry ships with a draft of 16 metres. If this isn’t there, they don’t even bring the smallest ones.”
The Red Sea situation
Meanwhile, the international observatory records that the effects on the global economy and trade of Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza, the origin of the attacks by the Houthi rebel militias in Yemen on ships transiting the Gulf towards the Red Sea, are being felt. In particular, along the route that crosses the Suez Canal, the shortest route between Europe and Asia, revenues have fallen by 50 percent in the last period according to the Egyptian government’s admission. «The situation of the Red Sea penalizes the Mediterranean – explains Becce -. Until the Red Sea becomes fully operational again, all Mediterranean ports will be affected, since the tendency is to bypass the Mediterranean, entering from the North, or pass through Tangier and then enter the Mediterranean with feeders. The geopolitical situation, therefore, does not help. However, I confirm that Taranto has an absolutely fantastic infrastructure from a characteristics point of view. We are working to help local traffic, but this suffers without transshipment connections. This traffic tended to work. There were around 80 thousand TEUs with Evergreen served by Taranto that migrated to Bari and Salerno. We must now be able to resume this traffic and bring the ports of Puglia back into a logistics system that works. And by the latter, I mean first of all a transhipment system that has international connections, so that local businesses have the possibility to connect, and then a railway and logistics system that is up to par. The latter is already there. Taranto has five kilometer-long tracks, exceptional stuff. It’s just a matter of finding the volumes.”
«With the group – adds Becce – we are preparing to face the next volumes. We are reselling the functionality of the machines and trying to bring the level of the terminal to what will be needed when the new ships arrive. We will present our plan in May. With the Authority, we gave a study to a large consultancy company to work together on the possible options for Taranto looking at 360 degrees”.
New hires? «First we have to bring the work. Unfortunately, a company, Kalipso, went bankrupt, which provided an intramed service, which at the moment can reach Taranto, which represented 50 percent of our volumes. We are working to look for another one together with new traffic.”
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