We inhabit the ‘mega-age’. With its megaships and consolidated shipping lines, this era has shifted the focus from building new terminals to re-equipping existing terminals in order to improve efficiency and productivity. To avoid becoming a bottleneck, the yard needs to be equipped with the right solutions so that it can deliver the required increases in capacity and productivity while providing a cost efficient service for both waterside and landside operations. This is the yard challenge of the mega-age.
The consequences of mega-ships and bigger, but fewer calls on the quay operations has been widely discussed in the industry, yet less attention has been paid to the impact on yard operations, which for many terminals is an even bigger challenge. No matter the size of the terminal, many terminals experience the challenge of the terminal becoming too small. The cascading effect of ships will bring 13-16,000 TEU vessels into several new trades as more mega-ships than ever before will be delivered during 2018.
