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MALTA Supported by

Malta goes multimodal

Responsibility for ports has passed to a new all-embracing transport authority – Transport Malta. The new organisation’s nine directorates also deal with matters such as maritime traffic control, pilotage, mooring, truck and other vehicle licensing, public transport, ship and even yacht registration. No doubt if Malta hadn’t closed down its 6½ miles of railway in 1928, they would have been included too. However, cargo handling

and terminal operation has been privatised for some time at both the Freeport and Valletta’s Grand Harbour. The latter, despite its name

is very much the smaller of Malta’s two major commercial

ports. It handled 16,000 trailers and 40,000teu, says Transport Malta’s ports chief officer, David Bugeja. It may be the smaller partner,

but the Grand Harbour is still a vital link to the outside world as it is the terminal for the Grimaldi ro ro services to Italy, as well as the Virtu Ferries fast catamaran service to Sicily. It’s also the island’s only real facility for grain and other vital bulk cargoes. With ship building showing some signs of revival following privatisation, along with cruise liners, Grand Harbour is turning into quite a busy and crowded place, says Mr Bugeja. While there are possibilities for turning some wharves into cargo facilities, it will probably be more a matter of

getting

maximum use out of what there is, as the site is hemmed in by built up areas, much of it a UNESCO world heritage site. Grimaldi has in fact developed Valletta

into

something of a car transhipment terminal, mainly for markets in North Africa as well as Malta itself.

maximum freight mode and is reputed to be the fifth largest vessel of its kind in the

world. VGT is investing €4m in modifying its ramp and developing a terminal. Freight is already quite important on the Sicily route – also served by some conventional ferries - as many of the international supermarket

Ricky Yong, general manager of Valletta Gateway Terminals, the main operator, says that his operation didn’t suffer any loss of cargo in 2009 and in fact probably registered an increase of around a percentage or so. “And, as early as November 2009, we started to see a small increase of about 5%. It’s not spectacular, but it’s encouraging.” He puts the increase down to

the continuing trend towards ro ro cargo for the Malta domestic traffic. It could be partly due to EU membership, which has boosted imports from the rest of the EU and which naturally favour trailers via Valletta rather than containers through the Freeport. Ricky Yong adds: “It’s interesting that when VGT started operations, the Freeport did more domestic unitised cargo than us, but now we

handle about 60% of it.” The Freeport handles most domestic container traffic but this is handsomely outweighed by the Grand Harbour’s trailer business. Ro ro seems set to grow

further. Virtu Ferries is due to introduce a much larger high speed vessel on the Sicily service in about August 2010, and the operation will move from the cruise t e r m i n a l area to VGT’s facility from the summer. The new vessel would be capable of handling up to 23 ar t i culated trailers

in

chains that have set up in Malta are supplied from there. Services are faster and more frequent than from mainland Italy, allowing daily replenishment of stocks. VGT had been hoping to

obtain some former shipyard land in Marsa opposite Valletta to develop as a container terminal but its bid was unsuccessful. The Government has in the event decided to split the land among several different uses and has also elected to

retain the drydock – which VGT proposed to fill in – in the hope that ship repair business can be revived. Plans to install a second gantry crane have been put on hold. The United Feeder Service operation from Valletta to Italy has also ceased, as has the short- lived Blue Ray ro ro service that operated between Sicily and Libya via Malta. However, none of these developments have halted the increase in cargo through VGT. The terminal is also handling large quantities of fibre optic undersea cable for Alcatel stored in special ‘tanks’ or cassettes. One other development, of mainly local significance, is that the three days a week, mainly freight Gozo ferry that operates from Pieta Creek a couple of kilometres outside Valletta is to move to Valletta itself. This should give better connections with ro ro services from mainland Europe. (The service is separate from the high-frequency Gozo Channel service between Cirkewwa and Mgarr which is the main link between the two islands.) VGT also hopes soon

to install a huge solar panel on one of its sheds. VGT managing director Peter Darley calculates that if all roof space was used VGT could theoretically supply all its needs and feed some power back into the grid.

ISSUE 1 2010

Shireburn turns paperwork mountain into a molehill

Maltese-based freight industry specialist Shireburn Software has launched a couple of new products aimed at reducing the shipping industry’s paperwork mountain. A new document management system, aimed at liner shipping agents, allows the myriad paperwork produced every time a ship docks – customs notes, suppliers’ invoices, garbage disposal certificates and so on - to be electronically scanned and stored on a per-voyage basis. All documentation can be filed centrally so that it is accessible to all users, putting an end to time-consuming and often fruitless searches through colleagues’ email inboxes every time someone is away from the office. Shireburn is also developing a new module for the ship’s agency function. In place

of sheaves of paper, the ships clerk will henceforth be able to fill in most of the documentation on an electronic tablet and then transmit it to whoever needs it. Slightly longer term Shireburn is also working on integrating a ‘micro cost’

payment system into the freight process. This will allow freight forwarders and others to collect monies electronically at low cost (say around €1 per transaction) seamlessly. Developing all the necessary interfaces with banking systems has been quite a challenge, says Shireburn managing director John De Giorgio but the results in terms of time and hassle saved compared with making myriad payments to banks or writing cheques will be well worth it, he believes. Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36