“The movement of a butterfly’s wings can be felt on the other side of the world.” The hackneyed, but very graphic, Chinese proverb fits perfectly with the situation that has been going on for months in the maritime transport sector, an epitome like few others of globalization. The attacks on Western cargo ships in the Strait of Hormuz, between the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf, have forced the largest shipping companies to take a much longer route for their movements between Asia and Europe: thousands of kilometers to the south, around Cape of Good Hope (South Africa). This change of course not only adds distance, a dozen days of crossing and tons of fuel and emissions, but it is having a tangible impact on several ports in the Spanish Mediterranean in the form of a substantial increase in activity.
The freight terminals of Barcelona, Valencia and Algeciras – the closest to the Atlantic mouth and also the most prepared – have seen an increase in the arrival of containers on large ships from the Asian continent, goods that other smaller ships (feeders) end up distributing throughout the rest of the Mediterranean. This shift in the map has turned Spain into the first entry point for these barges in Europe, and not the bottom of the bag that it was until now. Other places that have also taken center stage these months are Málaga, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria – where large vessels find a point to manage cargo and refuel – or Vigo, already en route to northern Europe.
A new situation, which represents both an economic opportunity – more income from the transfer of containers – and a logistical challenge, with specific situations of congestion and delays that port authorities and terminal operators deal with. The main problem is evacuating the thousands of tons of cargo, placed in containers, to their final destinations.
The president of the Algeciras Bay Port Authority, Gerardo Landaluce, highlights “the strategic role of Spanish ports in container management while this crisis lasts.” And he adds: “It is not the first time that our capacity has alleviated situations that would have been very difficult for Europe.” The manager avoids talking about congestion and refers to “a high level of occupancy.” The solution to avoid the risk of collapse, he says, is “to increase container evacuation capacity from docks and terminals, for which the entire sector must provide more capacity.”
In mid-April, the Danish shipping company Maersk, one of the largest in the world, already warned that it was “monitoring the situation” in the container yards (storage areas) of several ports in the western Mediterranean, “especially” in those of Barcelona, Tangier or the aforementioned Algeciras. “The density has increased,” she noted. “Customers are requested to collect both their import units and their empty containers as soon as possible.”
Before the attacks by the Houthi militias on Western container ships – one of them owned by Maersk – practically all cargo ships linking Asia to the Old Continent used the Suez Canal to save about two weeks of crossing. They usually made their first European stop in the Greek port of Piraeus and then visited one or two more (mainly Malta, the Italian Gioia Tauro or points in North Africa) before ending up in Rotterdam, Antwerp or Hamburg.
Today, according to data from Jordi Espín, of the European Shippers Council, less than 40%—mostly non-threatened Chinese shipping companies—maintain that route. The rest are choosing to circumnavigate Africa and enter Europe in a port in the south of Spain or the north of Morocco, where these barges—up to 400 meters in length and capable of transporting up to 23,000 containers—deposit the merchandise in the yards. in ports or in their terminals waiting for others to distribute it throughout the Mediterranean.
“Not all shipping companies are doing it this way, but many are for a matter of efficiency: it is the best way to optimize the use of megaships, the ones that make the most money,” adds Óscar Calvo, executive director of JCV Shipping, a sea freight management company. Both Algeciras and Tangier, he says, are “conceived and very prepared” for this container transshipment operation. Valencia and Barcelona, on the other hand, are much less so. And that, according to this executive, is translating into an increase in congestion due to the greater volume of ships and operations, which lengthens port operations and can cause delays.
“What we are seeing is growing competition for port space for containers and that, of course, alters the normal operations of entry and exit of containers to and from Spain, with specific situations of congestion and delays,” agrees Espín. “It is a logistical challenge: they are having to balance their usual traffic with that of these new routes.”
Competition in the yards
The situation in the Strait of Hormuz took us by surprise in the first weeks and the operational difficulty has been mitigated between March and April, according to the half dozen experts consulted by this newspaper. The question is how long Algeciras, Valencia and Barcelona will continue as entry bases to the Mediterranean. “No one has a crystal ball, but there are shipping companies that are betting on maintaining tension throughout this year,” says Landaluce.
Despite acknowledging that there were complicated days due to the readjustment of operations, especially between the end of December and the beginning of January, the three large Spanish ports deny a situation of collapse. The one in Algeciras, focused on transshipment traffic, registered greater activity in the first quarter of 2019 and in 2020 than at the beginning of 2024. And, at the moment, there is no sign of the maximum capacity of 5, 5 million containers annually offered by the infrastructure. The record was 5.1 million, in 2019, just before the pandemic.
The one from Barcelona has just issued a communication to shippers and terminal operators in which it speaks of “an increase in ship arrivals in some ports on the western shore of the Mediterranean, (…) which are absorbing a substantial volume of containers that, in part, are not of origin or destination in the port itself or its area of economic influence.” To counteract this, it is prioritizing stopovers to try to improve the storage and operational capacity of the terminals. And it has also hired 70 stevedores. Of the three large ones, the Catalan port is the most focused on import and export. The change in the rules of the logistics game has tested its ability to respond to the largest shipping companies in the world.
In Valencia, import and export traffic and container transshipment are more balanced. In this exceptional situation, a greater volume of cargo and less ship traffic can be seen, largely due to the replacement of medium-sized ships by the largest models in the fleets of shipping companies, which are those that cover the transfer of cargo from Asia. Also an explosion of traffic due to distribution to all of Europe, to Egypt, Algeria, Greece or Turkey, with year-on-year increases ranging from 15% to 97%.
The deputy commercial and business development director of Valencia Port, Néstor Martínez, assures that the infrastructure is digesting the significant extra load of activity and affirms that there will not be a major
problem “as long as the arriving goods are distributed by the shipping companies with agility towards other parts of the Mediterranean.”
More business
The positive side of this new dynamic is the economic return, both for the Spanish ports and for that of Tangier (Morocco). “There is a clear benefit for all of these facilities… and for Spain as a country,” says Espín. All, despite the fact that, as Calvo recalls, transshipment goods leave less money than those that have their origin or destination in Spain due to the lesser need for auxiliary services. Each giant from Asia pays ship and cargo taxes, but its containers do not cross customs or undergo inspection, so the costs are lower than those borne by an export or import container.
The reconfiguration of part of global maritime logistics affects giants of the shipping sector such as CMA CGM, Cosco, Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd and MSC, which have taken the Cape of Good Hope route. For the Spanish port system, it translates into a year-on-year increase of 1.4% in the first quarter in goods managed, reaching almost 136 million tons. In the first quarter, according to figures from State Ports – a 100% public organization – the volume of containers between January and March reached 4.3 million tons (+10.8%).
The avalanche of goods in transit already leaves a year-on-year increase of 48% in Barcelona, 28% in Las Palmas, 18% in Valencia and 6.5% in Algeciras. In all Spanish ports as a whole, merchant ship traffic grew by 4.6%. After the necessary readjustments in operations, they are now crossing their fingers so that the crisis does not get worse and that the management of transshipments is streamlined. Otherwise, the sources consulted point out, containers will have to be diverted to dry ports and areas far from the ports while waiting to continue their journey to their destinations in the Mediterranean.
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