Contship Italia has a very very strong
relationship with the customers so all
during our activity we try
to stay closer to our customers
in order to anticipate trends, needs, demands and in some
cases try to anticipate problems.
So actually some of the big
challenges like a giant vessel, new
tonnage, we like to consider as the new
normal. We start to deal with those kind
of issues in 2011 with our ports in La Spezia
And so we try to cope,
try to invest in the proper time to offer
customers a proper solution, reliable
solution, so we are actually are moving
forward. We do think that we can
represent a good opportunity for our
shipping lines for project differentiation
and that's why all of the issues related
with rig transport, customs activities
that we will consider ourself to be a
good partner for them in order to
exploit it to overcome this kind of
situation.
This is for us a big advantage in terms
of promotion because our company since
the early days back to '69 was
focused on rail transport which we
know very well as a very efficient
transport system. So we actually provide
our customers and the end users so the
customers of our customers with the
proper reporting in terms of how many
CO2 they can reduce, they can save using
our systems. Especially in the
corridor La Spezia- Milano, which is one of
the of the largest and the most important
economic corridors in Italy, we do offer
over 200 trains per week and this
includes a bigger returns for the
shippers that can use instead of the
truck. The rail, even for a short distance,
and those this isn't in completely in
tune with our mission and so for us
talking about the co2 reduction,
sustainability, is just a way to promote
better our services.
So extending the access to Central
Europe via Italian ports. This is a
concept that for many years has been
printed into powerpoints, let's say
theoretically. Saying that yes the
geographical location of the Italian
port can overcome and can offer
shippers a reduction in transit time
because obviously for the traffic for
the flows coming from east of Suez
reducing inventory costs. But
up to let's say 2013, this was only a theoretical
approach. What our group has been
able to do is a to build this
kind of project based on two main
aspects. The first is let's say the
perception of the service level in
Italian ports and in the rail transport
and in the customs operation. There was a
lot of people thinking about Italy
as bureaucratic and not really
efficient but Italy is changing and
operators like ContShip Italia can
provide those kind of new reliable
services.
The second aspect is because of the
let's say that the market is moving
towards demand the shipping lines
decided to increase the tonnage from
Asia to Med because of economy
of scale research and also for the
cascading effect that moving the larger
vessel towards Asia-North Europe
trade. Then the vessel in the range of
ten thousand-fourteen thousand has been
redeployed on the Asia-Med.
This has an effect is reducing the gap
between the sea freight from Asia-Med and
Asia-North Europe. So making the
solution by a South even competitive in
terms of cost, not only in transit
time, so actually the geographical
position of our ports of our sector is
really ready to offer an alternative. We
know very well that the majority
of the traffic moving from Rotterdam
down to Europe and we remain as a leader
because they have a market which is
twice the size of the market we can serve
from South. But we do think that for
specific type of cargoes, for specific
type of shippers, that want to have a
different product, alternative routings,
saving CO2, saving time then
they get access to a real product and not
only to a PowerPoint presentation.
Obviously one of the way to keep the
competitiveness of our ports is exactly
based on this integration port door, so
in our next future there is a huge
commitment on first investment in order
to improve the capacity in the
facilities which are the strategic
key elements because the trains sometimes
consider as not flexible, not really
reliable, but the problem is not of the
train
the problem is up on the nodes that
needs to serve the trains.
That's why we are strongly investing on
the maritime side and on the inland rail
ops, improving the space, improving
processing, improving equipment.
In the next future we do want to
let's say improve the network scope, adding
new connections from Italy to south
of Europe. Now we are actually quite
strong to Switzerland but we need to
add a new connection to South Germany.
All the area where there are important
markets that can benefit from shorter
transit times using Italian ports.
This will be our best call for the next
future.