COMPETITION BETWEEN CONTAINER PORTS IN THE NORTHERN ADRIATIC

Abstract

World trade has changed in the last decade such that container traffic flows are oriented towards more parts of the European continent. The European container port system is not a homogeneous set of ports; instead it consists of several big ports (e.g., Rotterdam, Hamburg, Algeciras...) and a large number of medium and small ports. Northern Adriatic (NA) ports, namely Rijeka, Koper, Trieste, Venice and Ravenna, are small ports. Each of these ports have different development plans but in varying degrees common hinterlands and costumers. As these ports are located very close one to another, they have to cooperate, but at same time they are competing for their market share. Based on the literature related to port competition and port selection the authors have analysed the throughput in NA ports for the last twenty four years, and in accordance with this, they have prepared a model for expected growth of container throughput in this region. The resulting model of port dynamics includes three characteristics of container throughput: relative growth, market share and container shift. Furthermore, to obtain some insight into cooperation/competition between the NA ports they have set up a simple dynamic model in which they selected ports’ market share fractions for each port as a dynamic variable