After dock strife, Marseille expects record 1.07 million TEU in 2012

MARSEILLE Fos is seeking to reclaim its role as the gateway to southern Europe, facilitating trade with the Far East and Africa and saving shipowners four to five days at sea in comparison with its competitors in the north.

With peaceful working relations restored since the implementation of the May 2011 reform, the Marseille Fos port community is ready to win back its customers and attract new traffic, reports Mumbai's LogisticsWeek.

The throughput of one million TEU should be exceeded between now and the end of the year, with a traffic forecast of 1.07 million TEU, surpassing the historic record achieved in 2007 of slightly over one million TEU.

Shipowners are backing the port once again with the addition of six new direct services from Algeria, Libya, South and East Africa, Turkey, Israel and the Caribbean. The port has also boasts of five services to Asia, eastern Mediterranean, Canaries and South America Atlantic, Algeria and the Caribbean. Nine services have increased their service capacity between 20 to 50 per cent.

With its quadrimodal transport network offering links by river, rail, road and pipeline, the port is recognised as being a strategic hub by the European Commission, which will be integrated into the future TransEuropean Transport Network (RTE-T).

Marseille Fos also boasts of a high logistical capacities with its spacious layout and there are plans to build a multimodal logistics centre scheduled for commissioning during 2013.

The port also has river and rail links to serve the Medlink ports multimodal platforms along the Rhone and the Saone. A high speed rail link will also connect Luxemburg to the GPMM soon. Eighty per cent of the goods at Marseille Fos are released within two days. With increased efficiency of crane drivers, up to 28 containers can be loaded and unloaded per gantry crane each hour in Fos and 24 compared to 14 previously.