This potential win-win initiative, with a clear commercial and business focus, was a chance for business owners from the Canaries and the two port communities to pool their strengths and look for synergies to start up new services and new traffic.
Connectivity to the Iberian Peninsula and Europe
The Port of Barcelona offers the Canary Islands’ importers-exporters and logistics operators excellent infrastructures and connectivity, providing access to the markets of the Spanish mainland and Europe, thanks to its privileged geographical position, rail services that link up to an extensive inland market, and the fact that is the only Spanish port with direct rail connections to Europe.
Barcelona is a powerful distribution centre for fresh products from the Canary Islands such as bananas and tomatoes. The Port offers regular, safe and reliable connections with strategic markets for the distribution of perishable goods, such as Mercabarna, Mercamadrid, Mercazaragoza, and large European markets such as St. Charles (Perpignan) and Rungis (Paris).
The Port also offers a wide range of shipping lines with the Far East and Short Sea Shipping services offering daily connections with destinations in Italy and North Africa, making it a hub for cargo coming from or going to the Canary Islands.
Other services and benefits presented by Barcelona include its enlargement project, its container terminals (currently in the midst of their own extension programme), and its customer orientation, which has led to a wide range of value-added services, such as the Efficiency Network quality label.
Links to West Africa
The ports of the Canary Island, especially Las Palmas, offer Catalan operators with valuable maritime and commercial ties with West Africa and very good connections with Latin America. Aside from mineral traffic from Mauritania to Europe, for which it acts as a distribution hub, the port of Las Palmas is developing a new line of business focusing on Ro-Ro traffic with African ports. In this connection, representatives of both ports have begun work to establish synergies that will help to increase traffic and provide growth to their economic environments.
The business relationship between Barcelona and the ports of the Canary Islands has a long tradition, with the first regular service established in the nineteenth century, and today involves five shipping lines (four for containers and one for goods on trucks) operated by six shipping companies. The managers and senior representatives of these companies (Boluda, WEC Lines, NISA, JSV, OPDR and Flota Suardíaz) were also involved in these presentations to help create new traffic and generate business.