همکاری های نوظهور بین صنعتی میان خطوط حمل و نقل و ناظران بارگیری: از رقابت تا همکاری

Since late-1960s stevedoring operations assumed a dramatic importance for shipping lines, who have been securing dedicated berths for some decades. Over the last 20 years, the institutional turn in ports drove the overseas expansion of pure stevedoring companies. For quite a long time carriers and stevedores fiercely battled each other both for bargaining contractual arrangements and for securing new concessions in the key port areas. Currently this scenario is slowly changing and some early-forms of partnership are coming out. This paper analyses the different pathways through which carriers satisfy their needs of handling services. Based on 2006 data it empirically demonstrates the growing resort to such forms of cooperation both contractually and via equity ventures.

The advent of containerisation has deeply affected the organisation of maritime shipping industry as well as the relationships among the players within the transportation chain. The demand for containerised transport has been continuously increasing and leading shippers to progressively enlarge their focus towards a ‘global’ perspective. The whole liner shipping industry had to adapt to these changes of demand. Besides the expansion in marine operations, top shipping lines (SLs) have also aimed at reducing other production costs, diversifying their investments and achieving paths of vertical integration along the transportation chain (Panayides and Cullinane, 2002). Major carriers have deeply invested on the land-side, set up a network of port facilities all over the world and become integrated shipping lines1 (ISLs). In reaction to the carriers’ evolving and aggressive strategies, but also in order to exploit the growing investment opportunities offered by the recent “institutional turn” in ports (De Monie, 1994, Airriess, 2001, Juhel, 2001 and World Bank, 2001), some pure terminal operators (PTOs) have been expanding their operations internationally, by setting up wide networks of terminal facilities across various regions. The port handling sector has been experiencing a similar consolidation trend: a handful of International Terminal Operators2 (ITOs) is on the point of dominating the market. The emergence of powerful pure terminal operators (PTOs), willing to diversify their portfolios and to increase their financial margins overseas, gave momentum to carriers’ involvement in terminals as major shipping lines were growingly constrained to defend their enormous investment in maritime assets (i.e. vessels). The last few years have been characterised by a strong battle between carriers and PTOs to get the control of the “port phase”. Nevertheless, this scenario, characterised by a clear-cut separation and a fierce competition between SLs and PTOs (Parola and Musso, 2007), is slowly changing (i.e. “corporate realignment” – Slack, 2004). The progressive scarcity of available port spaces for greenfield projects, the end of the “privatisation window” (early 1990s/early 2000s), as well as the enormous cash-flows needed for the realization of modern terminal facilities, are leading PTOs and carriers to stay “closer” to each other and to experiment with some forms of co-operation. In other words, the above changes are driving towards a partial convergence of their respective interests, giving rise to the establishment of contractual and equity cooperative agreements.