Felicity Landon
LISTENING to representatives of Genoa’s port community, one feels a sense of slight panic.
This year, Italy’s largest port has actually seen an increase in container volumes of about 11% — but, in the longer term, there is a real fear that Genoa could lose its position as a gateway to southern Europe.
The port is constrained on the marine side in terms of quay lengths, water depths and turning circles, and on the land side because of increasing road congestion and lack of terminal space.
The port authority is working on a new masterplan — the last one dates back to 2001 — and it is clear that major works are needed both land and marine side.
Because Genoa lies at the end of the European Union’s Corridor 24, there is a desperate hope that European funds will help with some major developments.
“The port is going to face real problems in terms of dealing with very large ships, in terms of infrastructure, accessibility and management issues,”
said Marco Sanguineri, the port authority’s planning and development director, speaking at an EU Port Integration workshop held in Genoa.
“In Genoa, the largest ship currently handled — and with some difficulties anyway — is 13,000 teu, in the Voltri terminal. At another quay, the limit is 11,000 teu.”
The new masterplan is based on new ships designed to carry up to 22,000 teu, said Mr Sanguineri.
Maritime works are the priority — quay length, dredging, turning circle — and the port entrance needs to be enlarged. Some €500m ($639.3m) would be needed for 2.5 km of breakwater before anything else.
Work could also include extending the breakwater to the west and moving the quay forward at the Voltri terminal to get more water depth, although this would make the approach channel even narrower at that end of the port.
“Genoa has been able to increase its traffic further — we have grown by 11% this year, and will have handled 2m containers by the end of 2012, despite the crisis,” said Mr Sanguineri.
“Shipping companies have decided to call at fewer and fewer ports, for economic reasons and economies of scale, and Genoa has enjoyed growth because so far we have been able to receive bigger and bigger ships.
“The point is that now we need to upscale our facilities even more, otherwise we will fail to keep up with these bigger vessels. And we will not just lose the bigger vessels, we will risk losing some routes entirely.”
Giordano Bruno Guerrini, secretary of Genoa’s Council of Intermodal Shipping Consultants, focused on the landside of the challenge.
Mr Guerrini says Genoa’s strengths include its strategic location close to Corridor 24 to Rotterdam and to Italy’s most important production area, and the large number of shipping services it handled.
However, he says its weaknesses include a lack of space for port activities, an inadequate rail system, the barrier of the Apennine Mountains between the port and its hinterland, a congested road system and conflict between the port and surrounding city.
Road congestion is a major problem; 140,000 vehicles a day use the first stretch of the main motorway from Genoa to Milan, and 22,000 of these are heavy trucks.
Mr Guerrini outlined the findings of a major study into the use of two inland terminals, or dryports, as a way of easing congestion at the port and on the roads.
Both sites are divided from Genoa by the Apennines. Alessandria is a rail terminal with 40 tracks and room to develop a full-blown dryport. Interporto Rivalta Scrivia calls itself the first dryport in Europe, and has warehousing, cold storage and other facilities already in place.
“There are mainly two traffic-handling options,” Mr Guerrini said. “You go to Milan by truck, or you use the railway network up to Alessandria or Rivalta Scrivia.
“The question is, can we convince users that this can be the right solution for so many problems, or should we follow the usual path, which provides acceptable results, of course?”
The reality is that the success of one or either of these sites in supporting Genoa’s expansion is dependent on good railway links and that, in turn, depends on the Terzo Valico, the third crossing of the Apennines.
This project — total cost €6.2bn — has been talked about for decades and is now urgent, said Mr Guerrini.
It would cover a distance of 53.9 km, mostly through tunnels, to provide a high-speed, high-capacity rail line that can shift 4m teu of containers from the seaport every year. It would double rail capacity in Genoa and enable direct links to either or both of the dryports.
At present, just 11.6% of Genoa’s container traffic travels to and from the port by rail; all the rest goes by road. Rival port La Spezia achieves a rail share of 30%. Genoa under-performs in terms of using its existing rail capacity, Mr Guerrini said.
However, the third crossing would have a strong impact because it would move traffic off the roads and increase integration between the port and the hinterland terminals, he said.
As for finance, some €1.1bn is available now and some preparatory tunnelling work has started. However, the rest of the funding remains far from certain.
“But if we go on waiting to complete the project, we will lose this opportunity. So we need to work fast in order to complete the project,” Mr Guerrini said.
 
Lloyd’s List, 07/11/2012