LIVORNO. «The purpose of our letter was to defend the work and commercial attractiveness of the port, which cannot ignore the container traffic for which the Region and the System Authority have invested (and continue to do so) huge public resources to improve the infrastructural quality of the port itself and make it more attractive on the container market, just remember the Darsena Europa and the widening of the access channel to the Darsena Toscana, works carried out to allow container ships of greater tonnage to be able to call the port. It is therefore not clear where the lies are, unless they are represented by the concerns of our members which, instead, also increase following the announcement of further “secondary” activities planned in TDT for early July, while those for containers stagnate” .
After the published interview of Tyrrhenian to Emanuele Grimaldi – CEO of the maritime giant of the same name, owner among others of Terminal Darsena Toscana – comes the response from Asamar, Cna Fita Livorno, Confetra, Confindustria Toscana center and coast, Legacoop and Spedimar, associations which last week said they were concerned by a possible decline in container traffic in TDT (and therefore in port) in the face of an increase in ro-ro, a circumstance denied by Grimaldi in the interview, according to which «the objective remains working with containers, the most profitable activity”. The Neapolitan group has just invested one hundred million on our docks. «The concerns can only be overcome by a prompt definition of the documents requested by the port community – continue the associations – also because we are not aware that otherwise those traffics would have migrated to other ports because, again as far as we know, the operator concerned had already negotiated all the essential terms for the continuation of the relationship with Cilp. We did not expect that the president of the International Chamber of Shipping (Grimaldi ed) used unusual tones towards fellow entrepreneurs. The associations, representing the entrepreneurs, appreciated the investment of one hundred million to acquire the shares of a company known to be in excellent health. They underline, however – we read further in the response – that in recent years other entrepreneurs have invested similar or higher amounts in physical industrial and logistical investments, which have equipped the port, to remain only within this perimeter, with a plurality of activities and terminals, at least two for each type of traffic: cars, passengers and containers included. It is misleading to evoke a situation of monopoly and positional rent, just as there are already two passenger terminals and two containers in Livorno».
It is in defense of «this competitive situation which inspired the letter sent by the associations – we read again – in defense of traffic, work and all operators. Emphasizing the right to property and freedom of enterprise is legitimate and obvious to us, but only to the extent that it is carried out remembering that it is a public good given in concession and which is subject to mandatory rules such as, first and foremost, the master plan , the three-year operational plan, the port system strategic planning document and the business plan on which the granting authority based its assessments to give its consent to the purchase of TDT. The current structure of the port allows free competition between entrepreneurs in a regulated market such as the port one, which protects free entrepreneurial choice within a framework of rules determined by the guidelines of the authority, the master plan, the three-year operational plan and the commitments undertaken formally by the concessionaires for investments, trade and employment. Therefore, if the intention of wanting to continue to believe in containers is true as we hope, we expect that the private party which has the concession for the largest terminal in the port, suited by its nature and by regulations to the handling of containers, will also carry out the its role by expressing in the business plan that it is about to present to the Authority the extent and type of investments it will want to make to maintain, if not improve, the commercial attractiveness of the DTT terminal”.
