State-owned Spanish Port System oversizing: an analysis of maximum operational capacity

ABSTRACT

The State-owned Spanish Port System (SPS) includes 46 ports for general use that are managed by the 28 port authorities distributed along the 8000 km of Spanish coast. SPS has not grown at a rate comparable to that of international maritime transportation. In our paper, we start from the hypothesis of a port system that appears to be oversized, subsidized, with regard to container traffic. Quantifying the maximum operational capacity of the different container terminals along the Spanish coast and their mooring capacities will provide the available dimensions for this type of traffic. In a second step, we will analyse whether SPS are sufficient (according to the perspective of international standards) to meet Spain’s needs, which is related to Spain’s strategic geographic location and its need to move containerized cargo for the domestic market. The paper concludes SPS has an oversized that limits competitiveness, which is indicated by the average transshipment ratio of approximately 50% and an average unweighted idle ratio of port facilities designed for container traffic of over 60% in the eight main ports.

KEYWORDS:

• Spanish Port System
• terminal investment
• maximum operational capacity
• container port
• Spain

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the valuable comments and suggestions of anonymous referees that greatly contributed to improving the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The annual rate of growth of the Gross Domestic Product in Spain was positive between the years 2004 and 2008. The growth was negative or null until the year 2014 when it began to increase by 1.4%.

2. To thoroughly analyse a particular terminal yard’s capacity, the following factors should be considered (although they were not considered in this study because of their limited impact on 24 different PAs such as included here):

● separation factor for 20 foot containers;

● activity peak factor; and

● transshipment factor.

In a comprehensive analysis of a single terminal, the yard’s capacity will be divided according to the equation [1–0.5 TSF] (Martin 2012), where TSF is the transshipment factor percentage value. The results obtained from this formula will always be smaller than 1; therefore, the yard’s results will increase when there is a transfer of containers. This correction factor has not been applied because our calculation had an estimated ADT (7 days), and by applying the correction formula, the terminal capacity would be too high (Ming-Jun and Yan-Ling 2012).

3. Exact calculations should precisely quantify each of the yards for all Spanish port terminals. The option of reducing the area of all terminals by 40% without considering the yards in the different terminal roads and the surfaces assigned to complementary terminal activities is based on the experience of the design of some terminals in the SPS (Boluda-Seville, Noatum-Málaga, and Valencia) and the CEDEX (2007) Technical Report.

4. This value has been considered after assessing reports of the Tarragona Port from 2010 to 2013 and collecting statements from the technical staff of the Tarragona and Pasajes ports. Considering the cost of ports in the Atlantic and Mediterranean and extrapolating to the overall dimensions of the 28 PAs, the value obtained here is considered to be representative of the order of magnitude for all PAs, which includes the knowledge that many of the associated infrastructure was built with different techniques and at different costs. Earthmoving, eventual refilling, or basic construction is not considered here because these processes are common to all port constructions.

5. This value was obtained from a private proposal to pave the Seville Port and extrapolated to all container terminals in the 28 PAs because the construction costs are similar for any PA.

Additional information

Funding

This work was not supported by any Research agency.