The vessels of Evergreen are calling in addition the port of Qingdao. The container traffic with Asia in Hamburg reached a total volume of 4.7 million TEU With 2,7 million TEU and an increase of almost 20 per cent the People’s Republic of China, including Hong Kong, has in 2010  again held  the top position of the 10 most important trading partners of the port of Hamburg in container trade. The importance of Hamburg for the Far East also reflects the cargo composition of China Shipping. Every third container carried by the Chinese shipping company is destined for Hamburg, plus a large portion of transit cargoes. Mr. Hongzhou Zhao, China Shipping Vice President, praised the excellent service quality and the productivity of the largest German seaport.  However, at the same time he criticised the high costs for transit containers in comparison with other European ports. His expectations for 2011 are dampened due to the large number of new buildings come into operations this year.ULCCS (Ultra Large Container Ships) with capacities of more than 10 000 TEU are increasingly calling at the port of Hamburg. 125 ULCS were dispatched in 2010. For 2011 the Port of Hamburg Marketing expects the number to double and to reach some 250 superlative container vessels. This number is a clear sign of the attraction of the port’s location for the international shipping industry. It clearly shows the importance and priority for the upgrading of the fairway of the lower and outer Elbe. It should not be overlooked that if these giant container ship are calling the port of Hamburg they are restricted to a limited time window due to the present draft and breadth restrictions of the Elbe River.
CSCL Star is the first of China Shipping’s container vessels with a container capacity of more than 10 000 TEU. Their total fleet consists of approximately 450 vessels, thereof 143 container vessels with capacities of up to 14 000 TEU. CSCL has presently an order book of 15 new buildings for 3000 – 8500 TEU vessels. In addition 7 sister vessels of the size of the CSCL Star, of which 5 units will still be delivered by Samsung Shipyard in Koje/South Korea in 2011, will be added to their fleet. Mr. Hongzhou Zhao, Vice President China Shipping, does not exclude that vessels of 18 000 TEU plus capacity could be of interest to China Shipping in future. China Shipping Group was established in Shanghai in 1997 in a merger of several smaller state-owned shipping companies. Their main activities include tanker, bulker, conventional vessels and container vessels (China Shipping Container Lines – CSCL). The container line with Europe started in March 1999 and has today 350 branches worldwide. With 70 international liner services CSCL is among the 10 largest container shipping companies worldwide. The European head office is based in Hamburg, not only because the sister cities of Shanghai and Hamburg are closely connected through business, but also because the major volume of the Chinese trade with Europe passes through Hamburg.

The ports in Gothenburg, Århus and Tallinn will now receive EUR 24.8 million in funding for a collaborative venture that will ensure cost-effective and environmentally smart sea transport for industry in Scandinavia and the Baltic region. In brief, the model has been designed in a way that the Port of Århus and the Port of Gothenburg will be reinforced as transshipment ports for the whole region. Both ports would become hubs for transport to and from Asia. A great deal of the transshipment that currently takes place at the large continental ports can take place here instead. Collaboration with other ports in the Baltic region will be intensified. The model offers significant benefits. By viewing the whole of Scandinavia and the Baltic region as one single market, it will be of greater interest to shipping companies to have direct routes from here. Pressure on the large ports on the continent, such as Hamburg and Rotterdam, would be relieved and more freight transport can be switched from land to sea with resulting environmental benefits.

Money for bottlenecks 
The EU funding will be used to eliminate bottlenecks in the port infrastructure, to improve the flow of information and for security systems. For the Port of Gothenburg the EUR 11.5 million that has been allocated will be used to improve road and rail links, a project that will be run together with the Swedish Transport Administration, the Port of Gothenburg and the Skandia Container Terminal. The City of Gothenburg and the Port of Gothenburg have worked with the Swedish government to secure funding for the project. “For the City of Gothenburg, with its extensive maritime tradition and as the largest port in Scandinavia, the project is a mark of our importance as a maritime centre for the whole of the Baltic region. We are looking forward to close, intense collaboration with other port cities throughout Europe and the continued development of the Port of Gothenburg as a Baltic hub. The project is also an indication of the importance of the City of Gothenburg being strongly represented in Brussels,” states Annelie Hulthén, chairwoman, Gothenburg Municipal Executive Committee.

 Auditors from the assessment and certification body spent a total of 13 days at the port over a six-month period, inspecting the company’s policies and procedures, including Management Systems for Safety and Environment, continual compliance with legal requirements and health and safety monitoring. David Gledhill, Chief Executive Officer of Hutchison Ports (UK) Ltd, which owns the Port of Felixstowe, said: “To be registered to the two standards at the same time is a significant achievement and confirms the port’s continuing commitment to its people and the environment.  The standards recognise the port’s commitment to go beyond mandatory requirements and promote continuous improvement, and are a great credit to our environmental and health and safety teams.” NQA is a leading assessment, verification and certification body and works in partnership with a wide range of businesses, government departments and charitable organisations to help improve performance in quality, environment and health and safety management.

Luke Speller, Senior Research Scientist at BMT Group Ltd and FLAGSHIP-RCS project leader explained:  “There are currently hundreds of thousands of shipping regulations including class, territorial and local variations that ship owners and operators must comply with. Being caught in breach of these regulations can cost a ship owner tens of thousands of pounds in fines. The current regulatory framework makes each ship owner or operator responsible for assembling and complying with all the regulations related to the voyages and stop overs that any of its ships make. Compliance can be a very onerous and expensive process.”

FLAGSHIP-RCS was developed to address these challenges by providing the maritime industry with an electronic regulations database; a regulations search system; regulation suggestion; automated compliance checking; form filling notification and assistance, as well as a lexicon of maritime terms in one user-friendly system.

The system enables an individual vessel to call down only the regulations that are directly relevant to its classification and location.  Searches are based on meaning rather than on the individual word so, for example, a search on the word ‘environment’ would deliver regulations relating to pollution, hydrocarbon and oil, as well as those under the generic ‘environment’ description. Based on the course that has been plotted for a vessel, FLAGSHIP-RCS will also identify and flag imminent changes in regulations as a vessel approaches and enters waters under different jurisdiction.  All of which helps with on board efficiency and burden reduction while optimising compliance.

FLASGSHIP-RCS has been developed to provide compliance checking so it can highlight if a vessel is definitely breaking a regulation such as a speed limit and can advise against certain actions for example: ‘don’t clean bilge tanks here’.  Finally, the system has been designed to automatically complete relevant docking forms and to recognise information that is entered repeatedly over sequential voyages.  This means that, over time, it can auto-suggest with increasing accuracy a partially completed form for the captain to check, amend and sign-off.

Mr Herman de Meester, Coordinator of FLAGSHIP commented: “The shipping industry always works hard to meet the twin objectives of reducing the risk and the environmental impact of the world’s commercial fleet, whilst generating the opportunity for real commercial benefits. FLAGSHIP-RCS is an excellent example of the industry collaborating to achieve just such purposes.” 

Led by BMT Group in the UK, FLAGSHIP–RCS was supported, delivered and trialled in conjunction with Regs4ships in the UK, Danaos and NTUA in Greece and TEMIS in France.

FLAGSHIP is a consortium of more than 40 European maritime organisations taking part in a part EU-funded project the focus of which is on improving safety, environmental friendliness and competitiveness of European maritime transport. The project was designed to further increase the capacity and reliability of freight and passenger services and to further reduce the impact from accidents and emissions.

The emphasis of the project is on on-board systems and procedures, ship management systems on shore, impact of new technology on present ship-, owner- and operator organisations, effective and efficient communication interfaces and impact of standards and regulations.