Tarragona is the place to be

HUB SCOUTS

EVENT REPORT • TARRAGONA’S ANNUAL MED HUB DAY FOCUSED ONCE AGAIN ON THE POTENTIAL FOR GROWTH IN REGIONAL LIQUIDS TRADE AND THE ROLE OF THE PORT AUTHORITY

THE STUDY OF logistics has been honed down the centuries largely by the military – getting personnel and materiel to the right place at the right time is a matter of life or death for them. So when one hears that the Romans chose Tarragona – or Tarraco, as it was to them – as their capital in Iberia primarily for its location and logistics potential, it is worth taking notice.

Indeed, during the Port of Tarragona’s annual Med Hub Day, which took place this past 21 and 22 November, for delegates sitting outside watching the late autumn sun lighting the waters of the western Mediterranean and picking out the silhouettes of the various ships waiting at anchor, it was easy to see that the Romans got it right. But the port authority has ambitions to leverage its location and its possession of a natural deepwater harbour to expand on its existing role as one of the major regional ports and instead become a true hub for international trade – and not least in chemicals.

More than 80 professionals from the chemical industry and its logistics partners attended the 2019 Med Hub Day, the third time it has been held by the Port of Tarragona and the ChemMed chemical cluster, attracted by the opportunities offered to hear about current development plans and to meet with their peers in the industry.

“The Med Hub Day is one the most important events hosted by Port of Tarragona,” said commercial director Genoveva Climent. “It means lots of efforts by the whole commercial team, but the results are very positive. One of the strategic developments of the port is to become a regional hub for liquid bulk freight and this event helps on expanding this vision in an international way. We are working very hard on explaining our hub vision through many different presenting opportunities at events, and the growth of the Med Hub Day gives us lot of confidence.”

SETTING THE SCENE The 2019 Med Hub Day started with a detailed and engaging introduction to the Port of Tarragona by Josep Maria Cruset i Domènech, president of the Tarragona Port Authority. Arnaud Waché, president of AWBPSolution, who also chaired the Med Hub Day sessions, spoke about the advantages that Mediterranean ports offer to chemical shippers.

Delegates were also treated to a tour of Vopak Terquimsa’s sites in the port. Terquimsa, which is 50 per cent-owned by Vopak, offers some 430,000 m³ of tankage in 82 storage tanks in two tank farms on Tarragona’s chemical quay, and has another 27,500 m³ of capacity currently under construction. The tour also included a visit to the terminal’s traffic and operations rooms to see the advanced infrastructure and technologies being used to monitor every tank.

Terquimsa’s investment and expansion is one element of Tarragona’s overall intention to double independent tank storage capacity by 2025. As part of that, the port authority is continuing to work on land reclamation to make further space available for tank pits and jetties, and to dredge the channels to those jetties.

Liquid bulk currently accounts for around 60 per cent of Tarragona’s total cargo throughput, standing at some 22m tonnes in 2018 but rose by 14 per cent in the first half of 2019. Further acceleration of that growth in traffic is likely once the long-awaited extension of the

Euro-gauge rail service to Tarragona is complete, which is now expected to be in 2021.

Nicolas Maes of Port+, who attended the event, said: “I’m very interested in seeing the railway connection on the Catalonian coast of Spain to Tarragona come to a completion. I am sure that this will lead to a significant increase in attractiveness of liquid imports for the Mediterranean area.”

PREPARE FOR THE NEW The Med Hub Day conference itself began the next day with an informal networking breakfast. Suitably energised, the audience was welcomed by Arnaud Waché, who introduced Sandra de Mey, commercial manager at North Sea Port, who had a singular perspective on port development. North Sea Port itself was formed at the beginning of 2018 by three established ports – the Dutch Zeeland ports of Vlissingen and Terneuzen and the Belgian Flemish port of Ghent. The cross-border collaboration raised eyebrows at first – and some of that scepticism turned out to be well founded.

De Mey explained, for example, the problems involved in having to deal with two different sets of national legislation, although this had been expected. More of a surprise was the ‘culture clash’ experienced in bringing together a staff from two different countries, albeit they had a shared language. De Mey identified this as something Tarragona will have to be alert to once the new rail link opens, as its personnel will also be connected more directly to their counterparts in northern Europe.

De Mey’s presentation, ‘Learnings from Successful Ports in Liquid Bulk’, took that experience and focused on collaboration, communication and how newer ports – or those looking to reach new markets, such as Tarragona – can compete with existing powerhouses. Ports in the AmsterdamRotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) region have become used to dealing with huge volumes of international trade over decades and are well versed in working with a truly global clientele, but if the Mediterranean ports want to highlight their potential as an alternative they need to be aware of a potential challenge to their existing culture.

“It was an honour to present my ‘new’ port to the people of the Mediterranean,” de Mey said after the conference. “I hope I could inspire my port colleagues to think beyond boundaries.”

WHERE’S MY TANK? Later in the day, a four-way panel discussion involving representatives from Tradebe, Vopak, Alkion Terminals and Tepsa delved further into the question of what the Port of Tarragona can offer the chemical industry. The key takeaways from this session can be summed up by contemplating the question: what do terminals offer customers? It was agreed unanimously that “safety first, and no surprises” is the most important factor. After that, price, trust, supply chain integration, efficiency, flexibility and adaptability to changing environments are the key selling points to potential new customers.

But gaining new business as a terminal operator can often just be a matter of having the right tank in the right place at the right time. Terminal operators therefore need to anticipate changes in the market to make sure capacity is available when and where it is needed. Forecasting that sort of demand is, though, not easy, although it was thought possible that the advent of increased transparency through the application of emerging digital solutions will help improve matters. New digital platforms and online marketplaces are already having an impact along the chemical supply chain and will surely impact terminal operators and their customers.

THE MED HUB DAY GIVES THE PORT OF TARRAGONA’S

PERSONNEL THE CHANCE TO MEET ITS BULK

LIQUIDS CLIENTS WHILE ALSO GIVING INDUSTRY THE

OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN ABOUT THE PORT’S PLANS

Andy Wilson, head of BRS Group, provided an insightful presentation on the outlook for tanker shipping in the Mediterranean and how this will affect demand for tank storage services. Of course, the biggest factor in his outlook is right under our noses: the potential impact of the ‘IMO 2020’ rule on bunker fuels on product flows on cross-Med and Suez trades.

Nicholas Giraud, chief executive of Forwardis Group, picked up on the earlier discussions about rail connectivity. His paper explored the main routes used to move liquids in bulk across Europe and the hindrances that are holding up growth of rail transport in the Mediterranean.

SAME AGAIN, PLEASE Looking back at the end of the event, Jordi Anglès, commercial coordinator at the port and the programme organiser of Med Hub Day, said: “I think that the main idea discussed at the event was the potential of the Mediterranean. We built a transversal programme so many topics were discussed during the workshop. In my opinion, the main points were that the Mediterranean can be (and is) an excellent option to improve and to optimise liquid bulk supply chains; that Tarragona has enough capacity and variability of products to give solutions to all the potential customers while maintaining the key factors of quality, safety and price; and that the European railway network can be an opportunity for Mediterranean ports to be more connected to the main European production nodes and consumer markets.

“We are very happy with the results of the event,” said Anglès. “We received a great response from the attendees regarding the programme, which continued from the same structure of previous events.” Sandra de Mey was one of those who praised the event, saying: “I didn’t know what to expect from this conference but it was beyond my expectations. One of the better ones I did attend this year!”

Nicolas Maes said: “For me personally, the networking aspect of the event was the most interesting. Due to the relaxed atmosphere, it was very easy to have a casual chat with the other attendees. Furthermore, the target audience was very relevant to Port+ and we gained a lot of valuable insights. The importance of a strong intermodal connectivity system stood out to me personally and, from a terminal point of view, being able to offer reliability and flexibility (multiple options) to customers seemed very important. I also hope that the aspect of digitisation and data sharing, and how it could lead to

REPRESENTATIVES OF THE LOCAL STORAGE TERMINAL

INDUSTRY WERE IN AGREEMENT ABOUT THE ADVANTAGES

OF TARRAGONA AND THE STEPS THEY NEED TO TAKE TO improved efficiency, was stressed enough. Finally, the impact of a potential co-operation between Mediterranean ports was a very interesting topic.”

“We expect next year to be more exciting than this year,” Anglès continued. “We will work hard in order to define an excellent programme and to organise interesting activities for the first day. We want the event to grow and for sure we will make a great Med Hub Day 2020.” That event is already in the calendar: 19 and 20 November 2020. The programme is being developed and will be made available on the dedicated website, www.hubdaytarragona.com.