2018: A record year for the Port of Antwerp – CEO Jacques Vandermeiren
2018 looks set to be a record year for the Port of Antwerp for the sixth time in a row, with growth in all types of cargo and a recent wave of investments. This confirms the port’s attraction and further establishes its position as a world-class player that is also home to the largest integrated chemical cluster in Europe. Crucially it also assures the continuity of the port’s role as the main engine of the Belgian economy. In 2019 the Port Authority will keep to the same course, further building a sustainable future for the port. In pursuit of this goal it is concentrating heavily on structural solutions to challenges such as mobility, the energy transition, digitisation and innovation.
Unparalleled growth in all segments
With expected growth of 5.1% compared with 2017, the earlier forecasts of a 6th successive record year have been confirmed. The expected total freight volume in 2018 comes to 235 million tonnes, a new record, with unparalleled growth in all types of cargo. The large expansion in container freight continues, reaching 130 million tonnes (up 5.8%) or 11 million TEU (up 5.5%). Liquid and solid bulk for their part are up by respectively 4.5% (to 76.5 million tonnes) and 5% (to 12.8 million tonnes), while break bulk has experienced growth of 1.8% (to 15.6 million tonnes).
“Hij zette steeds de haven eerst en dan de schepen”’Havenbedrijf CEO @jacquesvdmeiren bedankt @MarcVanPeel namens havengemeenschap voor jarenlange inzet voor zijn #portofantwerp vele realisaties o.a. sterke #chemischecluster #kieldrechtsluis #dewaterbus #havenhuis etc pic.twitter.com/ZBt6PsyPNW
— Port of Antwerp (@PortofAntwerp) December 7, 2018
Wave of investment confirms attraction of chemical cluster
In 2018 leading international players in the chemical industry including among others Borealis, INEOS, Nippon, Sea-Mol and Oiltanking/AGT brought a huge wave of investment to the port, amounting to more than 2 billion euros. Their choice of Antwerp further confirms the port’s attractiveness for chemical companies, as the largest integrated chemical cluster in Europe. Indeed it makes Antwerp even more attractive for them.
Port Authority CEO Jacques Vandermeiren declared: “With these excellent growth figures and the recent surge of investment, in 2018 the port has once more confirmed its role as the main engine of the Belgian economy. Now we will continue on the same course as before, towards a sustainable port of the future. But to keep growing in a sustainable way, we together with the whole port community must strain every effort to meet the challenges facing us today. The port of the future must have enough capacity and be accessible, sustainable, smart and secure to remain attractive for investors.”
Need for additional container capacity
While the new record year and the investment surge together confirm the vitality of the port, they also confirm earlier forecasts that the maximum container capacity will very soon be reached so that additional container handling capacity is urgently needed.
De @Boekenbeurs en @PortofAntwerp zijn partners voor de Boekenbeurs 2019 “sprankelende samenwerking te verwachten” @jacquesvdmeiren pic.twitter.com/6TTUbDpaE9
— Barbara Janssens (@barbarajanssens) November 11, 2018
Port Authority CEO Jacques Vandermeiren outlined the situation: “We are already far beyond the optimum capacity limits in the terminals below the locks, with serious consequences for efficiency. We therefore continue to insist that additional container capacity below the locks is urgently needed. The Port of Antwerp is doing very well, which is good news for the economy. But it is also very important to keep up this impetus and to build the necessary capacity as soon as possible. The most recent draft version of the Preference Decree for creation of additional container capacity represents the last straight towards a breakthrough in this complex project. We are therefore very pleased with the efforts by the Flemish administration, and are glad to work constructively on further development of Alternative 9 which is now being considered. This alternative now has to be further tweaked in nautical and operational terms in order to make it sufficiently feasible and attractive for the economic operators while limiting the environmental impact to the absolute minimum.”
35 million euros for transition projects
The transition to a circular low-carbon economy is another main objective of the Antwerp Port Authority. Over the next three years the Port Authority will therefore invest no less than 35 million euros in innovative sustainability projects. One good example of this is the declared ambition of making onshore power supplies available for seagoing ships at berth in the Deurganck dock in the near future, which will lower NO2 (nitrogen oxide) emissions by 36%. In addition we seek to promote alternative sustainable fuels such as LNG and hydrogen. This year the CMB shipping company won the Sustainability Award with the “Hydroville,” the first hydrogen-powered passenger ferry. Given the very promising sustainability potential of hydrogen we are currently studying the feasibility of setting up a hydrogen fuel station in the port. Earlier this month a hydroturbine was installed in the Kallo lock to generate electricity from water power. The aim is to use this advanced technology to make all sea locks in the port energy-neutral in the longer term.
Our Port Pro of the Month is Mr. Jacques Vandermeiren, CEO of @PortofAntwerp. In this interview, we will talk about his vision for the Port for the next decades, Brexit, the role of ports in the climate change debate and many more interesting topics. https://t.co/V0BPa7FfFl pic.twitter.com/w1Z1VMsED7
— ESPO Secretariat (@ESPOSecretariat) October 31, 2018
A smart, innovative and secure port thanks to digital transformation
The port of the future will also be a smart port, with the emphasis on innovation and digitisation. The Port Authority has therefore assumed a pioneering role in digital transformation, aimed at becoming an open and innovative hub for the introduction of new technologies. The ambition is to install a digital nervous system covering the entire port with among other things smart cameras, sensors and drones to give full monitoring, which in turn will make it possible to respond directly to events in the port. In addition, data is being made transparent and available to all players in the supply chain thanks to NxtPort, the data platform for the port that was set up nearly two years ago.
In the words of Jacques Vandermeiren: “With the growing importance of data and the gains in efficiency that we seek to derive from it, in future the Port Authority will build further on the foundations that it has already laid with NxtPort. The increased participation in NxtPort by the Port Authority underlines this confidence. We strongly believe that digitisation will smooth the way for smart, efficient and lower-cost logistics, and that it will also play an increasingly important role in terms of mobility and monitoring emissions.”
