Her appointment to the executive board will now be ratified by a ministerial decree. Backing for the nomination came on February 14 when the supervisory board launched its latest five-year term by also electing a chairman and deputy chairman from the 17-strong line-up of governmental, industry, business and staff representatives. 

The new chairman is 54-year-old financier Jean-Marc Forneri, who has served on the board since it was formed in 2009.  M. Forneri has been the founder chairman of leading French mergers and acquisitions specialist Bucephale Finance since 2004.  He previously held high-profile posts with ski equipment manufacturer Rossignol, the Worms conglomerate and the Credit Suisse banking group.  He has also acted as a political advisor on industry and finance since the 2008 world economic crisis.

The deputy chair is supervisory board newcomer Delphine Andre, 47, chairman and managing director of the Charles Andre Group, the logistics, cleaning services and hotels company founded by her grandfather in 1932.  She has led the group since 2002 after previously working as a barrister.

The French port reforms of 2008 established a three-tier management structure of executive, supervisory and development boards.  A maximum of three further executive directors will be nominated by the new CEO for approval at an impending meeting of the supervisory board.  Membership of the renewed development board – composed of port professionals, union representatives and local authorities – will also be finalised in the coming weeks.               

Biographies

Jean-Marc Forneri studied at the Paris Institute of Political Science and the National School of Administration before joining the finance inspectorate at the French ministry of the economy.  In 1988, aged 29, he became managing director of world-leading ski equipment manufacturer Rossignol and drove eight-fold growth in six years.  He then spent two years heading development at Demachy Worms – the merchant banking arm of the Worms shipping, sugar, insurance and banking group – where his projects included the sale of state-owned container line CGM to CMA.

In 1996 he joined merchant bank Credit Suisse First Boston as managing director France, establishing the company as a mergers & acquisitions market leader with a string of mega-deals.  These included Total’s €52 billion acquisition of Petrofina and Elf – the biggest ever in France; the €43billion sale of Orange to France Telecom; and Renault’s first joint venture in Russia.  Subsequently he was appointed CSFB vice-chairman Europe.

He formed Bucephale Finance in 2004 and has again forged a market leading position with acquisitions involving household names such as Galeries Lafayette, Clarins and Carrefour and the creation of investment bank Natixis through a €24 billion merger.

Delphine Andre graduated as a corporate lawyer in 1990 and held company posts until joining the Valence bar in 1995.  After seven years she moved to head her Montelimar-based family firm, which employs 7,000 in 14 countries and has an annual turnover of €939 million.  Apart from cleaning services and hotels, the four divisions include bulk and automotive logistics (see story below).      

Fos to handle Dacia car imports

The Renault-Nissan car plant in Tangiers, Morocco, has chosen Marseilles Fos and automotive logistics specialist TEA – part of the Charles Andre Group – to handle imports of its Dacia brand for the French market. 

Starting in April, more than 20,000 Dacia cars per year will be received at a new import/export car terminal at the Brule-Tabac quay in Fos.  The port authority selected TEA to develop and operate the site last December following a call for tenders in November 2012.  The port already handles 220,000 vehicles per year at two existing terminals.  The latest 14-hectare site, which features pre-delivery inspection facilities, will boost annual capacity by up to 60,000 cars       

The order will be fulfilled with the assistance of Liebherr Container Cranes in Ireland. In the last two years, Liebherr delivered 9 mobile harbour cranes to Transnet, which brought their fleet to 13. In addition Liebherr Container Cranes Ltd. delivered 2 ships to shore container cranes to Ngqura Container Terminal in 2012. The ship to shore cranes in this order will bring the total number of Liebherr ship to shore cranes operated by Transnet Port Terminals to 31.

The new ship to shore cranes will have an outreach of 65 m, a span of 30.48 m and a back reach of 19 m. The cranes have a lift height of 41 m and will be capable of lifting a 65 tonne load under a twin lift spreader. These cranes have been designed to handle container vessels of up to 24 rows across, allowing the world’s largest container vessels to be serviced.

The new Liebherr RTGs destined for Ngqura are state of the art machines, will span 7 containers and a truck lane and can stack up to 5 containers high. This is Transnet Port Terminals first purchase of Liebherr RTGs. The RTGs will be fitted with Liebherr’s DGPS, Auto Steering and Container Location Recognition systems and will interface with the TOS system providing container location and weight information.

The RTGs are fitted with numerous safety features including a whisker RTG to stack and ultrasonic RTG to RTG anti-collision systems. Cameras will be fitted to the RTGs that monitor the long travel in both directions, which are then displayed on independent monitors in the driver’s cabin.

In common with all Liebherr RTGs and RMGs, Liebherr’s 8 rope reeving anti-sway system is installed as standard and effectively eliminates sway, even under the windy conditions of exposed port environments. This allows for productivity increases of between 30%-40% over alternative models.

Liebherr’s dual speed drive system is installed on the RTGs allowing for significant environmental benefits including reductions in noise levels, emissions and fuel consumption.

Yilport will also implement the APS automated container identification and handoff solutions at the quay using crane OCR at its facilities in Gebze, as well as at its new terminal, Gemport, under construction in Gemlik.

Yilport is a leading provider of container, general cargo, bulk and liquid cargo handling and warehouse services, and plans to improve operational productivity, safety and security by deploying APS solutions across its cargo facilities including Gebze, E5, Yarmica and Gemlik. The APS solution allows Yilport, as the first terminal operator in Europe and the Middle East, to manage exceptions across all gates and cranes at multiple terminals from one central and remote location in real time. The solution also provides full support for Yilport’s enterprise reporting.

Sean Pierce, CEO of Yilport Holding said: “We are focused on the continued expansion of the Yilport portfolio of terminals with the aim of being a top 10 global port operator. We will be able to realize this vision by investing heavily in people, facilities, equipment and by employing state-of-the-art technologies. APS is a key partner. Their solutions will support our growth through increased automation of our processes and by providing accurate and timely information to all our valued customers. Like our customers, we require the high level of accuracy and dependability that APS can deliver.”

The three new quay cranes will join the six already operational cranes at KPCT, making it a total of nine STS cranes. In addition, six cutting edge automated stacking cranes (ASC) have recently joined the former 30 ASC’s at KPCT, and a further six will be commissioned later in Q1

The Super Post Panamax quay cranes were produced by Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industry Co. Ltd. in China with a cost of 28 million USD, and travelled overseas on especially built ships to Khalifa Port’s container terminal, the first semi-automated container terminal in the region. One STS crane is 126.5 meters high and weighs 1,932 tons. It has an outreach of 65 meters (22 containers) and a lifting capacity of 90 tons. 

Commenting on this occasion, ADT’s chief Executive officer Martijn Van De Linde says: “ADT is taking a leading role in facilitating the continuous growth of trade between Abu Dhabi, the UAE and the world. This substantial infrastructure investment significantly increases port capacity and enables Abu Dhabi’s continued economic growth. Khalifa Port Container Terminal will not only accommodate the rapidly growing container traffic in Abu Dhabi, but also serves as an ‘enabler’ for new business generated by Khalifa Industrial Zone Abu Dhabi (Kizad), which aims to be one of the largest industrial zones in the world.”

Khalifa Port has been planned in a systematic way and the master plan includes well-constructed, structured phased developments. The first phase allows for an annual handling capacity of 2.5 million TEU (20-foot equivalent units) containers.

Khalifa Port opened for business in late 2012; it is expected to continue to add capacity in phases as needed, through to 2030. “As a result of an expected increase in activity over the next several years, the new port facility was developed to have an initial design capacity of 2.5m twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) and 15m tonnes of general cargo,” Martijn van de Linde said. More than 1.3 million TEUs have now been handled at Khalifa Port container terminal, since it opened commercially in September 2012. 

In December more than 100,000 TEUs passed through the port in just one month. These are very significant figures for KPCT and the highest number of containers ever handled in one month in the emirate. The ‘crane moves per hour (GMPH)’ is a key indicator for performance in a marine terminal and has improved no less than 35% since starting operations at the Khalifa port container terminal. As of last month Abu Dhabi Terminals announced productivity levels to have reached 34 GMPH on average. Considerable progress has also been achieved on the landside. Martijn van de Linde added; ‘truck turn around times’ are well ahead of what our modelling and operational simulations had calculate. We are turning Trucks under 13 minutes in the Container Terminal. “This adds real value to the trade and its service providers ” he said.

Khalifa Port is located on 2.7-sq-km of reclaimed land situated 4.5 km off the coast of Taweelah, a site 60 km north of the city of Abu Dhabi and 75 km south of Dubai. The port is located within an hour’s drive of a number of other major transport and logistics centres, including Abu Dhabi International Airport, Dubai International Airport. With a 4 km quay wall and 18 metres draft, Khalifa Port is capable of handling the largest ships in the world.