Hong Kong’s declining container port traffic shows why it should be run more ‘like the subway’, analysts say
- Declining throughput at Kwai Tsing Container Terminal throws a spotlight on the need for a new private-public partnership to oversee management at the 50-year-old port facility
- Transshipment business is important to Hong Kong’s future role in maritime professional services such as arbitration, financing and maintenance
Hong Kong needs a centralised port authority to help oversee changes that will enable the ageing 50-year-old Kwai Tsing Container Terminal to cope with rising competition from other logistics and port operators around the region, according to experts.
Kwai Tsing has undergone successive expansions nearly every decade since it was completed in the 1970s, such that it can now support 24 cargo ships berthed simultaneously.
Unlike other ports in the region, Kwai Tsing’s facilities are shared among five independent operators, a system that is “quite unusual” for the region, according to Professor Collin Wong Wai-hung, a supply chain and logistics expert at Hang Seng University in Sha Tin.
He said that Singapore has a single operator in the form of the Port of Singapore Authority, which could help to explain its rising throughput volumes, whereas Kwai Tsing is the only port in the top five globally to lose traffic in the four years to 2018.
Roberto Giannetta, executive director of the Hong Kong Liner Shipping Association, said Hong Kong has to take aggressive action to deal with declining volumes, particularly in transshipment trade.
