Mediterranean versus Northern Range Ports. Why do Italian Containers Still Prefer Routing via the Northern Range Ports? Advice for a new Policy

Abstract

The Mediterranean ports, and Italian ports in particular, both the hub and commercial ports, have experienced pronounced growth favored by: 1) world growth in volume of containers; 2) greater inflow/outflow of containers pertaining to the area extending from Bavaria to Hungary; 3) time savings achieved by mother ships that dock in the Mediterranean, in particular in the hub port of Gioia Tauro, as compared to travel times to reach the Northern Range ports; 4) privatization of Italian ports and use of intermodal rail-based transportation, although rail travel is still inadequate to handle container growth in Europe and the Mediterranean, a growth which also involves the North African countries. Given this framework, it is surprising that a non marginal share of containers in northern Italy does not sail from/to Italian ports, but is routed via the Northern European ports instead, especially for traffic from/to Asia. We will therefore examine: a) transoceanic traffic pertaining to European countries and countries bordering on the Mediterranean, highlighting the growth of Italian container traffic; b) European intermodal transport via port rail links; c) the number of TEU from/to Italy that uses the Northern European ports. The volumes of TEU confirm that this abnormality is due to the superiority of the Northern Range ports as regards time, costs and rail-based intermodal services in comparison to the Italian situation, despite the modernization that has been undertaken in Italy. We wish to emphasize that this is the first published study reporting data on the quantity of Italian containers handled by the Northern Range ports.