TIMING could have been better with the absence of Houthi rockets threatening Red Sea-Suez shipping, but Italy's Port of La Spezia has successfully docked its first 21,000-TEUer, expected to be first of many from THE Ocean Alliance, reports Genoa's Informare.
This marks the end of the beginning of a campaign to have ships dock at northern Mediterranean ports rather than circumnavigating the Iberian Peninsula to dock at Northern Range Ports from Le Havre to Hamburg.
What forced this traditional counterintuitive long distance routing was that Europe's consumer-rich populations did not live in the south, which was ill-served with poor road and rail links to distribute large shipments overland.
But infrastructure has much improved over 30 years with road and rail facilities have been upgraded, and La Spezia has done the dredging to accommodate the mega ships which now can dock, and perhaps influence fundamental trade patterns.
La Spezia Container Terminal, on the northwest coast of Italy 64 miles from Genoa, with its new road and rail links to the consumer-rich lands of the 'Blue Banana' farther north, are now used on the Ocean Alliance's Asia-Europe routes.
With the arrival of OOCL Indonesia, La Spezia Container Terminal of the Contship Italia group a big step has been taken. In the Port of La Spezia, the landings of container ships begin with Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL) used in the Asia-West Mediterranean service (WM1 MEX2 AEM1 MD2) operated with a homogeneous fleet of ships 400 metres long.
Commenting on the arrival of OOCL Indonesia, Contship key account manager Matteo Ferrando said: 'This is a further significant step for Contship Italy, which once again highlights the ability of our terminal to handle large vessels.'
SeaNews Turkey
This marks the end of the beginning of a campaign to have ships dock at northern Mediterranean ports rather than circumnavigating the Iberian Peninsula to dock at Northern Range Ports from Le Havre to Hamburg.
What forced this traditional counterintuitive long distance routing was that Europe's consumer-rich populations did not live in the south, which was ill-served with poor road and rail links to distribute large shipments overland.
But infrastructure has much improved over 30 years with road and rail facilities have been upgraded, and La Spezia has done the dredging to accommodate the mega ships which now can dock, and perhaps influence fundamental trade patterns.
La Spezia Container Terminal, on the northwest coast of Italy 64 miles from Genoa, with its new road and rail links to the consumer-rich lands of the 'Blue Banana' farther north, are now used on the Ocean Alliance's Asia-Europe routes.
With the arrival of OOCL Indonesia, La Spezia Container Terminal of the Contship Italia group a big step has been taken. In the Port of La Spezia, the landings of container ships begin with Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL) used in the Asia-West Mediterranean service (WM1 MEX2 AEM1 MD2) operated with a homogeneous fleet of ships 400 metres long.
Commenting on the arrival of OOCL Indonesia, Contship key account manager Matteo Ferrando said: 'This is a further significant step for Contship Italy, which once again highlights the ability of our terminal to handle large vessels.'
SeaNews Turkey