The real growth in Hong Kong lies in the double counting of transhipment cargo barged down the Pearl River or fed in from regional ports.
The head of a Hong Kong terminal operator made a salient point in a newspaper report this morning. He said an increase in throughput did not necessarily take up port capacity in direct proportion.
That is obvious to someone actually in the business of shipping containers, but it appears the message may have filtered through the rational thought firewall protecting the Hong Kong government.
The terminal operator was commenting on the need for a Container Terminal 10, which he said would not be required before 2018. He reckons at least another six years of moderate growth would fill up the port’s available capacity.
Back in 2008, in the hallowed halls of Hong Kong’s Transport and Housing Bureau (yes, housing really is linked with transport. Go figure), it was announced that CT10 would be needed by 2015. A new container terminal isn’t built in a day, but it still took another two years before a study into the feasibility of CT10 was done.
The delay was most likely because so much effort was going into selling the profligate bridge across the Pearl River Delta to Zhuhai and Macau that the government did not want to distract the public with another wasteful project.
Anyway, two sites had been suggested in a previous port masterplan and after looking about, Tsing Yi, just around the corner from CT9 was established as the best place to situate the 10th terminal. Since then – nada.
Last year the container terminals in Hong Kong’s Kwai Tsing port handled 24.37 million TEUs, up 2.8 percent. Almost half of those boxes are double-counted transshipment, so the actual numbers have declined. This is an important point because it impacts directly the space requirements of the port in the future.
Transhipment ports transfer boxes from one ship to another, or from barge to ship and require less space than boxes being trucked or railed in. If there is one thing Asian ports are masters at, it is in utilising all available space in the most efficient way possible.
All the terminals in Hong Kong have improved their productivity and have the ability to improve further through more automation, upgraded facilities, wi-fi, better barge facilities, and a bunch of other processes I have never heard of.
There are still six years to 2018 when CT10 may be required, but unless there is a complete reversal of current trends, it is hard to see the port needing extra berthing even by then.
More yard space for storing boxes passing through would be a better, and vastly cheaper, option for handling Hong Kong’s future growth, which is likely to be all transshipment cargo.