Port of Rotterdam

Discuss about the Transportation and Freight Logistics Spark.

The role of seaports cannot be undermined in the efficient working of the world economy. Most countries that are engaged in international trade needs water transport. The port of Rotterdam is famous as distribution hub in Europe and the port of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia is famous for maximum cargo capacity. Every port has its own authority that maintains the efficiency and manages the berths, cranes, roads, and storage facilities. Both the ports have high traffic in the whole year. Apart from economic benefit, Port of Melbourne also provides education to children and students, so increasing the employment opportunity for the people surrounding the port. Managing the port area, berth, docks, and storage yards is complex. There are various challenges faced by the port due to high traffic. The most related challenge is spacing. The Port of Rotterdam is most efficient in warehousing and distributing the consumer goods- dry products, vegetable products. Rotterdam tries to control CO2 emission and engage wind turbines to protect the environment near the port. The port group says that if they do not take any step, there is a possibility of only CO2 surrounding the whole port. The major challenges faced by both the ports are spacing and the ways to resolve those problems.

The port of Melbourne is situated in Melbourne, Victoria. The port of Melbourne is one of the largest container ports in Australia. More than 3000 ships visits this port every year. After discovering gold in 1850s, the trade has grown more. The port formed the Melbourne harbor trust was formed in 1877 to delegate the authority to develop and manage the port and speeding the international trade links. The port of Melbourne group manages the commercial operation held by Victoria government on September, 2016. Port of Melbourne is the largest general cargo port in Australia (portofmelbourne, 2018). The main service operates all near to provide safety, efficient navigation. The goals are focused to achieve a sustainable development of the port. Port of Melbourne started education port centres for students, which can help them to apply for operating ports. Workshops and trainings are also provided by the port to the students for ship repairing and cargo handling. These educational steps aim at developing future technical labour and allow them to discover more port-related profession.

The port of Rotterdam is largest Europe`s sea port. The port has its leading position to access the water-going vessels. Rotterdam connects the goods to more than 1000 ports in the world. Until 2004, it was the busiest port. Rotterdam was one of the largest carrier of cargo. The port is developing by constructing new dockyards. The port of Rotterdam is an efficient distribution hub across Europe. Wide range of distribution, warehousing service of various goods like consumer goods, dry bulk goods and car. Rotterdam can easily distribute goods easily, safely, sustainably through truck or train to regional centres of Europe (Portofrotterdam, 2018). The main aim of POR is to improve port`s competitive position in the industry by positioning the port as logistic hub (portofrotterdam, 2018). Proper restructuring of labour that took place at various ports resulted in emerging skilled workforce.  

Port of Rotterdam Save Time On Research and Writing Hire a Pro to Write You a 100% Plagiarism-Free Paper. Get My Paper	Port of Melbourne
Port of Rotterdam is one of the largest industrial and logistics hub in Europe.	Port of Melbourne is one of the largest port in terms of containers and cargo in Australia.
The harbour master`s division is authorised for safety, smooth working for handling the ships securely in the Port of Rotterdam.	The main objective of POM group is to give world class safety, reliable port services that plays an important role in supporting Victoria`s economy.
The port harbours have become backdrops for nightlife districts. The port was at its intensity during world port day. Rotterdam has ties with Maas River (Rotterdam, 2018).	Port of Melbourne is surrounded by Hobson bay and Yarra river having fisherman hub- great business location (City of Melbourne, 2018).
Rotterdam Port is the busiest container port of Europe and it is the 11th largest container port in the world.	Port of Melbourne is the largest maritime international hub for cargo.

Port of Melbourne

5.1.1 Environmental challenge- People living in this area mostly concentrate in the east and south of the Melbourne and logistics facility is in west, which increases transportation cost due to long distances. Most trucks are appointed which works from time to time in tight schedule without considering the capacity of trucks, which increases the oil cost further increasing the freights. The major challenge faced by Melbourne is to accommodate big ships at port. Bourke, CEO is looking to promote bigger container ships to the Victoria. Bigger ships can provide big space, which will lower unit costs. The CEO is planning to increase the capacity of the port (Sexton, 2017). The government wants to increase port`s capacity and also wants to build second port but it will increase congestion in the near cities. However, congestion near the port does not allow increasing the port area. During planning experts decided to lay new roads for maximum heavy truck traffic, but it can become a problem for nearby populated areas (Portoftechnology, 2018).

5.1.2 Spacing issues- The battle between residents & Freight operators is continuing. Rail freight is more efficient than road freight. More container of goods can be transported in one take through rail. However, the space for rail lining up is not available. The renewal and development activity has become more politically and socially significant because urban population have increased. Government is finding ways to sought houses, employment, and providing ecological balanced environment to the urban population. Many ideas developing promoted for Melbourne failed to give good planning, social equity, and well-designed environment. Huge private and public investment in Melbourne is not working well. However, focusing on redevelopment will transform abandoned port and regulate high-density residences with increased economic pace (Carry, 2017).

Individually, Port of Rotterdam is a strong player influencing the changes in supply chain. The port`s authority is trying to establish relationship so that, it can influence the working of rail and also the operation of business outside the port. The port of Rotterdam is largest refining including electricity, biomass and gas and chemical in the world. The competitive positioning of the port has become better by entering in strategic connectivity. The authority started to focus on increasing port-related companies and influence maintenance of majority shares. Port of Rotterdam strongly believes in competition and engages high modern technology to promote innovation (National Transport Commission, 2013). Rotterdam is majorly oil port and the oil products operate a large number of petrochemicals. Raw fossil assisting the oil sector is becoming less crucial. The port is aiming to reduce CO2 emission. Either CO2 can dominate the area near port. Port wants to reduce the use fossil. Chemical sector is shifting to vegetable products (Insight, 2016). The port is establishing wind turbines near it to make the port area efficient and clean. The port authority noticed that the farmers need CO2 to grow their crops faster and it decided to transport CO2 via pipelines to the greenhouses. The port is also trying to distribute industrial residual heat to greenhouses and to private households.   

Comparison between Challenge faced by port of Rotterdam and port of Melbourne

Land usage impacts- All the ports have large space intensity. One serious problem for ports is associated with infrastructure, which prevents and hinders access to the area. They occupy large area near metropolitan cities. Rotterdam already has large area of urban land for various port operation. Land use impact limits the port development projects and negatively influences natural habitat of the cities near it. With ports like Rotterdam and Melbourne rail connection problems is common. The problems of road connection are not isolated. The need of ring road approach routing to port for cargo vehicles or flyover of two roads meet. Apart from negativity, the port also gives economic benefits. Port provides employment to nearby people raising their economic development. Urban encroachment was always a challenge associated with space for port. The Melbourne port is undertaking to increase depth of its line of channels up to 14 metres, so that it can accommodate large and efficient containers. The problem is entering or leaving the port for ships becomes difficult due to restrictions. Without proper planning of increasing depth of channels, sustainable development and growth of ports will become problematic due to higher cost. Higher cost will be more associated with exporters and shipping lines. Ships are changing their cargo patterns due to the limitations of Melbourne.

Environment imbalance is the environment loss to the state occurred due to expansion of port. The major pressure on ports is from urban growth. Space for land ports and freight centres is highly competitive. The plan Melbourne explains the dilemma about how Melbourne`s changes will be managed where the population is beyond 4 million. Development of Melbourne port increases concentration of traffic in city. If the port operates two or five times more than its existing capacity it can pressurise the transport infrastructure and reduce the basic amenities for people who live near the port (Carey, 2017). Development in Melbourne increases noise pollution and If not managed properly the air and noise quality issues of truck traffic near port is increased. Government plans to provide houses to people on the port`s doorstep (Wilmsmeier and Zarzoso, 2010). Problems of parking increase the number of ships at the port as well as risking their safety. The rising cost of fuel pulls shipping companies to reduce their operational costs. By entering into the international market and promoting open economy. The heavy number of ships due to china`s growing demand leads to shortage of vessels.

The solution to larger vessels of cargo can be solved by allowing the ships to stay in deep water. Ports responded to the unsatisfied growing through investing in dredging equipment and cranes to adjust big vessels. Ports tried to do major investment on replacing their older assets and buying the vessels which has lager capacity to accommodate goods. The purpose of identifying the space related problems were to introduce innovative containers because of lack of container space area. Establish the residential areas much far from the seas and oceans where ports can be build, then the problem of expanding the new or existing ports can be solved easily. The ports can also use off-dock sites by assembling the containers at a point before moving them to a destination. It will help to store empty containers.

By continuously using these off-dock sites, they become the extension part of platform to handle extra volume. Bigger ships having high capacity are preferred more and even the shipping industry started making more huge ships to avoid the double use of fuel. The way containers are filled and loaded at the origin may create challenges related to operation when it arrives at berth. The vessels filled with such a huge capacity could not be removed fast enough, which blocks the space of other container.

The spatial restriction is related to the size of the vessel, port and the water depth and temporary restriction is related to arrival time and date of the vessel.

In discrete layout, only the vessel area is divided for each vessel known as berth, in which only one vessel can be placed for a certain time. The vessel`s length cannot be greater than berth area. It may happen that one large vessel can occupy more than one berth area.

The increasing trade at the international level increased the demand for storage and space. The lack of land for expansion is the major issue for port of Rotterdam (Ganji, Babazadeh, & Arabshahi, 2010). The ports should more focus on yard layout. To manage the sequence of vessels at the port is proposed in Berth Allocation Problem (BAP). It deals with the problem of managing the sequences of available vessels at a particular time horizon in a specified layout and taking care of operational constraints of the port. The arrangement of all the vessels should be in such a way that time spend by the vessel at the port can be reduced (Elwany, Ali, & Abouelseoud, 2013).

CBAP (continuous berth allocation problem) tried to minimise the penalty for rejected vessels. To achieve and satisfy operations of the port with proper supply of oil, but certain cargos can be positioned to fix berth along with the platform near the shore. In BAP, there can either spatial restriction or temporal restriction.

Conclusion

With the increase in number of open economies and ramified economic changes, It is accepted that a country without are lacking a major necessity. Ports are the part of mass transportation. Water transport is the cheapest in terms of investment and fuel consumption. The capacity of ports in terms of container and vessel is the major challenge faced by the ports. The port has to consider biodiversity and environment around it. The port should not penetrate the near residential area. These factors hinder the port to expand and focus on their operations. The problem of port congestion is not new to all ports. The spacing problem related to berth of cargo and container is becoming major.

The various measures are taken to improve the infrastructure of the port, firstly mathematical proposal BAP (berth allocation problem) dividing the area according to container`s length and breadth. These containers and vessels are parked in a sequence from the main platform and staging them together far from the platform attached to the seashore, which helps in increasing the operational area of the port. Bigger ships needs more time to unload, which increases berth time (Hacegaba, 2015). Heavy ships should be kept in deep water. Expanding the area of the port is a need to increase the flow of international trade.

References

Carry, A. (2017). Port of Melbourne expansion could spark war with residents, experts warn. Retrieved from: https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/port-of-melbourne-expansion-could-spark-war-with-residents-experts-warn-20170316-guzpq7.html

City of Melbourne, (2018). Port Melbourne. Retrieved from: https://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/about-melbourne/melbourne-profile/suburbs/Pages/port-melbourne.aspx

Elwany, M. H., Ali, I., & Abouelseoud, Y. (2013). A heuristics-based solution to the continuous berth allocation and crane assignment problem. Alexandria Engineering Journal, 52(4), 671-677.

Ganji, S. R. S., Babazadeh, A., & Arabshahi, N. (2010). Analysis of the continuous berth allocation problem in container ports using a genetic algorithm. Journal of Marine Science and Technology, 15(4), 408-416.

Hacegaba, N. (2015). Bold solutions: how seaports can conquer congestion. Retrieved from: https://www.polb.com/civica/filebank/blobdload.asp?BlobID=12788

Insight, (2016). Five challenges en route to the Port of 2050. Retrieved from: https://www.portofrotterdam.com/en/news-and-press-releases/five-challenges-en-route-to-the-port-of-2050   

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National Transport Commission, (2013). International ports and supply chain observations. Retrieved from: https://www.ntc.gov.au/Media/Reports/(2D028DAB-04FE-4298-93E4-F0EB4AE65523).pdf

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Portofmelbourne, (2018). Port operations. Retrieved from: https://www.portofmelbourne.com/about-us/about-the-port/port-operations/

Portofrotterdam, (2018). Port of Rotterdam. Retrieved from: https://www.portofrotterdam.com/en/port-authority/about-the-port-authority

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Rotterdam, (2018). Rotterdam tourist information. Retrieved from:   https://en.rotterdam.info/locations/the-port/

Sexton, D. (2017). Challenge to accommodate larger ships at Melbourne. Retrieved from: https://www.thedcn.com.au/challenge-to-accommodate-larger-ships-at-melbourne/

Wilmsmeier, G., Martinez-Zarzoso, I. (2010), Determinants of maritime transport costs: a panel data analysis for Latin American trade, Transport Planning and Technology, 33(1).