The consortium comprises of Philippines-based International Container Terminal Services Inc. and Australia’s Anglo Ports Pty Ltd, and will operate the terminal, meaning there will now be three operators in Melbourne and four in Australia, promoting increased competition in shipping.
“The delivery of additional international container capacity through this new terminal will greatly assist in meeting the demands of trade growth, including the continued increase in Victoria’s exports to Asia and other emerging world markets including China, Korea and India,” Mr Hodgett said.
Mr Hodgett said the winning bidder had lodged an innovative bid, which demonstrated the group’s global experience in terminal operations, development and shipping.
“The new terminal will handle over one million standard containers each year and Victoria International Container Terminal Ltd will concentrate on promoting off-peak truck movements to improve the efficiency of Victoria’s transport logistics and feed expanding supply chains.
Work on the new terminal is expected to start later this year and be completed in late 2016.
Phase 1 of the terminal, to be ready for operation by 31 December 2016, will have one berth of 330 meters fitted with three post-Panamax ship-to-shore cranes, 23.7 hectares of yard and off-dock area with fully automated operations from the gate to the quayside to deliver an estimated capacity of 350,000 standard containers.
The terminal will be able to handle vessels with a capacity of up to 8,000 standard containers.
Servicing the terminal will be a 10-hectare empty container park with a working capacity of around 200,000 standard containers annually.
Construction of the terminal superstructure and facilities is planned to commence in late 2014. A second phase, planned to be operational by 31 December 2017 will deliver an additional two post-Panamax ship-to-shore cranes on a second 330-metre berth.
When fully developed and as required by volume growth, the 35.4 hectare terminal will have a total of six post-Panamax ship-to-shore cranes on 660 meters of berth, and will be able to handle up to 1.4 million standard containers annually, with the empty container park’s capacity rising to 280,000 standard containers.
Investment for the full development of the Webb Dock Container Terminal and the ECP is estimated at around AUD$550 millio. The new facility will create around 200 new jobs at the port.
Decision receives good and bad reaction
The Good
The introduction of a fourth stevedore on the east coast offers a viable alternative that will achieve greater efficiency, better service and lower prices, said Paul Zalai, founder and director of industry advocacy body Freight & Trade Alliance (FTA).
He’d praised the Victorian government’s decision is a move away from existing anti-competitive arrangements, dispelling the previously promulgated myth that stevedoring services are essential in all ports on the East Coast of Australia.
“The market is now clearly mature and commercially scaled to sustain multiple ownerships in all ports whereas the main contrary argument for this approach a decade or more ago was the need for economies of scale within each terminal.
“Shipping lines that I have engaged with share my vision and Freight & Trade Alliance’s (FTA) related advocacy to government for the need for serious change.
“Nowhere else in the world are there examples of the same terminal company offering services across a series of ports. More so, individual consortium members now often insist that their vessels go to different terminals for so that a single service can support a range of alternative terminals in a single port.”
The bad
The Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), on the other hand, was less enthusiastic.
The MUA has expressed concern about the Victorian Government’s selection of a stevedore with a “poor international reputation” for IR to operate a new third container terminal in the Port of Melbourne.
“The Naphtine government has surprised the maritime industry and unions by appointing a Philippines-based global stevedore for the terminal at Webb Dock.”
The MUA’s national secretary, Paddy Crumlin, said that International Container Terminal Services Inc has recently been involved in labour disputes in the US and in Honduras.
“They have got a poor international reputation in industrial relations,” he said.
Mr Crumlin, who is president of the International Transport Workers’ Federation and chairs its dockers’ section, said the MUA would work with the company to develop productive, efficient and safe work practices.
Mr Crumlin said that having one-off terminal operators went against the industry’s preference for strong networks in logistic and distribution.
“We will work with them to optimise the standards, but it’s a surprising and a worrying development.”
The project marks ICTSI’s entry into Australia, but it already manages 30 port terminals in six continents.
Anglo Ports is an Australian company led by Richard Setchell, a former chair and CEO of P&O Ports worldwide.
Industry observers had seen Hutchison Port Holdings, which is part of Hong Kong’s Hutchison Whampoa Limited, as the frontrunner in the tender.
Hutchison already has terminals in Brisbane and Sydney and adding an operation in Melbourne was seen as a crucial step in giving its Australian business critical mass.
The other bidders in Melbourne were a consortium of ANL Container Line Pty Ltd and Macquarie Specialised Asset Management Limited, plus Qube Holdings Limited.