Towards A Better Port Industry

Towards a Better Port Industry provides professionals in freight transport and maritime logistics, and specifically the port industry, as well as students in these fields, with a better conceptual understanding of the port industry. It includes key insights and best practices for port management and development, and an overview of new trends and developments relevant for developing winning strategies. After an introduction, Chapter 2 offers a new perspective on port governance, in which public interests, corporatization, state-ownership, and shareholder policies take a central role. Chapter 3 explains how new trends and developments affect port development and argues that assuming ‘business as usual’ often leads to major port development mistakes. Chapter 4 deals with port development and discusses all major port development challenges, including granting concessions, developing a port vision, crafting stakeholder support, choosing port performance indicators and creating a port innovation system. The final chapter deals with port development strategies and includes themes such as strategies of port development companies, pricing and business development. This book will broaden professionals’ conceptual understanding of the ports industry, and provide insights on the latest developments in this area. For students, this book provides an industry-focused and non-technical ‘essential reading’ for gaining a deep understanding of the ports industry.

Port Economics, Management and Policy provides a comprehensive analysis of the contemporary port industry, showing how ports are organized to serve the global economy and support regional and local development. Structured in eight sections plus an introduction and epilog, this textbook examines a wide range of seaport topics, covering maritime shipping and international trade, port terminals, port governance, port competition, port policy and much more. Key features of the book include: Multidisciplinary perspective, drawing on economics, geography, management science and engineering Multisector analysis including containers, bulk, break-bulk and the cruise industry Focus on the latest industry trends, such as supply chain management, automation, digitalization and sustainability Benefitting from the authors’ extensive involvement in shaping the port sector across five continents, this text provides students and scholars with a valuable resource on ports and maritime transport systems. Practitioners and policymakers can also use this as an essential guide towards better port management and governance.

With 80 percent of the world’s commodities being transported by water, ports are the pillars of the global economy. Port Management and Operations offers readers the opportunity to enhance their strategic thinking and problem-solving skills, while developing market foresight. It examines global port management practices at the regulatory, commercial, technological, operational, financial, and sociopolitical levels. This powerful sourcebook describes how seaports are being affected by the changes occurring nationally, regionally, and globally. Evaluating the new regulatory framework, it pinpoints the industry’s implementation readiness and identifies potential problem areas. The book classifies the spectrum of interrelated port management principles, strategies, and activities in a logical sequence and under four cornerstones—Port Strategy and Structure, Legal and Regulatory Framework, Input: Factors of Production, and Output and Economic Framework. Detailing best practices and the latest industry developments, the book highlights emerging challenges for port managers and identifies opportunities to develop forward-thinking strategies. It examines the effectiveness of current strategies, tactics, tools, and resources of numerous global ports and highlights the necessity of adopting a proactive stance in harmonizing the laws, regulations, and policies pertaining to the maritime, oil, and gas industries. The shipping industry has myriad complexities and this book provides maritime managers and professionals with the wide-ranging and up-to-date understanding required to thrive in today’s highly competitive and evolving environment.

This book addresses the latest organizational, regulatory, and governance issues of main port systems, linking them to the financial aspects that are currently in use regarding investments in the port industry. A general review of port management and operations is complimented by analysis of country specific systems and a look at how ports could develop in the future. This book aims to examine how different port organizational and regulatory contexts affect port investment practices and related financial tools. The book is of use to researchers and practitioners interested in maritime economics and transportation studies.

Seaports, as part of urban centers, play a major role in the cultural, social and economic life of the cities in which they are located, and through the links they provide to the outside world. Port-cities in Europe have faced significant change, first with the loss of heavy industry, emergence of Eastern European democracies, and the widening of the European Community (now European Union) during the second half of the twentieth century, and more recently through drivers to change including the global Sustainable Development Agenda and the European Union Circular Economy Agenda. This book examines the role of modern seaports in Europe and consider how port-cities are responding to these major drivers for change. It discusses the broad issues facing European Sea Ports, including port life cycles, spatial planning, and societal integration. May 2019 saw the 200th anniversary of the first steam ship to cross the Atlantic between the US and England, and it is just over 60 years since the invention of the modern intermodal shipping container – both drivers of change in the maritime and ports industry. Increasing movements of people, e.g. through low cost cruises to port cities, can play a major role in changing the nature of such a city and impact on the lives of the people living there. This book brings together original research by both long-standing and younger scholars from multiple disciplines and builds upon the wider discourse about sea ports, port cities, and sustainability.

Get a comprehensive overview of the entire port industry, and insights into the geography, economics, politics and trade involved in port management.

Written by leading experts in the field, this book offers an introduction to recent developments in port and hinterland strategies, operations and related specializations. The book begins with a broad overview of port definitions, concepts and the role of ports in global supply chains, and an examination of strategic topics such as port management, governance, performance, hinterlands and the port-city relationship. The second part of the book examines operational aspects of maritime, port and land networks. A range of topics are explored, such as liner networks, finance and business models, port-industrial clusters, container terminals, intermodality/synchromodality, handling and warehousing. The final section of the book provides insights into key issues of port development and management, from security, sustainability, innovation strategies, transition management and labour issues. Drawing on a variety of global case studies, theoretical insights are supplemented with real world and best practice examples, this book will be of interest to advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, scholars and professionals interested in maritime studies, transport studies, economics and geography.

This book provides a response to the unexpected challenges imposed on every aspect of today’s maritime business. All chapters of this book are concerned with the single challenge facing the maritime business world – that is, uncertainty. Each chapter deals with a specific area of the maritime business community in an effort to better understand the complicated markets, to seek for a solution of economic or financial sustainability under the pressure of climate changes, to discuss technology as an option for the future, and finally to show how to utilise the big data set for better informed decision- and policymaking that used to be unfeasible in terms of scale and capacity. It is hoped that all those endeavours are considered as the first small step towards practically transforming the industry in line with Schumpeter (1943) as well as academically changing a paradigm of thinking and scientific discovery in line with Kuhn (2012), so that the maritime industry is better informed and prepared, and can greatly contributing to human lives.