1. CONTAINER TERMINAL’S CAUTIOUS INVESTMENT
With the signs or at least rumours of economic growth, terminal operators might
wonder whether there will be future return on their present investment. Some doubt
the economic recovery. Even a tangible market improvement cannot yet be considered
to be persistent. Port operators must be very cautious in their investments. At times,
there are two ports competing in the same region, with regional container throughput
being less than the sum of the ports’ capacity. Container lines which are the prime
customers of the ports change their schedules freely. Unforeseen political events can
hamper the markets at both ends of a container route. All that can leave a container port
with huge investment without return. On the other hand should the economy grow as it
did before the recession, it will be too late to develop the infrastructure at the pick of the
market and the port may lose the bigger chunk of the profit to its rivals.
The solution for this dilemma can be the practice of low cost optimization for the
existing infrastructure. Ports must practice for busy days. Following are examples for
conventional ports :
1) In many ports the loading and discharging of the outbound and inbound
containers is being done by separate cycles of quay transfer equipment (tractor/trailer
or straddle carriers).
pg. 1

2. This way, for half of the cycle the equipment moves loaded which is considered
productive. The other half of the cycle the equipment is travelling empty to fetch the
next container, this movement is unproductive and should it be reduced to a
minimum, time and energy will be saved.
In “figure A”, the ship is discharging by one gantry crane. The productive part of the
quay transfer cycle is shown by black arrows and loaded tractor/trailers with gray color.
White trailers are empty and white arrows show unproductive movement. Yard
equipment in this example is RTG.
Inbound and outbound container movement can be combined in one quay cycle. As
shown in “figure B”, the same ship is loading by one gantry crane and discharging
by another on two different bays. Now the same quay transfer equipment is being
used for both inbound and outbound containers and for most of the cycle is moving
loaded and productive (black arrows).
The drawback of this system can be the increased risk of errors, compared to the
simple loading or discharging cycles.
pg. 2

3. 2) Conventional ports normally designate an area near the berth for marshalling. In
that area, containers are being physically arranged for loading on board, prior to the
ships’ arrival. The goal is to shorten the ship’s berth time. Containers need to be
reshuffled unproductively for marshalling. Should the terminal manage a model to pre-
marshal the containers in such a way that it fits the loading sequence with minimum
extra re-handling to be done during ship operation, the area can be saved for more
productive activity and increase the terminal’s capacity.
To summarize, one of the cost effective approaches to prepare the traditional container
terminals for possible economic recovery is optimizing practices on the existing
infrastructure.
Capt. Hossein J. Kamali
pg. 3