Columnists

Inland ports crucial to boosting regional cargo business plans

CARGO

The Mombasa port competes with Dar es Salaam to dominate the region’s maritime business. file photo | nmg

Port performance measurement is gaining ground in their contemporary management.

Stiff competition and the progressive change towards more commercialised and industrialised entities have been vital — a majority of ports are actively engaged in the complex supply chains that aim, among others, to increase market shares. For example, the Mombasa port competes with Dar es Salaam to dominate the region’s maritime business.

Containerisation has revolutionised maritime shipping and port terminal operations and supported the substantial growth in international trade over the last decades.

While traditionally our ports — Kisumu included — have fairly clear and distinctive hinterlands, containerisation has initiated a trend towards large overlapping or contestable hinterland regions.

The competitive landscape has become even more complex by the proposed setting up of large container transhipment facilities in locations with a weak hinterland.

The integration of such transhipment hubs will lead to a new paradigm in port evolution. The hubs tend to have greater depth in view of accommodating modern containership drafts, placing them at a technical advantage and spurring the setting of hub-feeder services.

As intermediary locations, they can offer a compromise between economies of scale in vessels and terminals, and the need to maximise connectivity in maritime networks.

The growth in container traffic has reached a level in our port facilities where a more efficient form of hinterland transportation needs to be organised. It must involve the incorporation of inland freight distribution hubs and terminals as active nodes in shaping load centres development.

This port regionalisation phase is characterised by the joint and coordinated development of specific load centres and multimodal logistics platforms in the hinterland.

This is a rather more recent concept where a direct inland connection, particularly through rail, is established between an inland terminal and the port.

North America has seen the extensive development of inland terminals and their associated logistics zones and is a good example for Kenya to emulate.

The proposed feasibility study on the development of Taita Taveta inland container depot (ICD) by the Kenya Ports Authority could not have come at a better time when a logistics structure such as the standard gauge railway is already in place.

While the Special Economic Zones Act 2015 is in place to guide on such developments, the functions of a dry port and the processes an ICD should fulfil need not to be confused. There is also the proposed Naivasha dry port in the pipeline.

The development of Kisumu port should focus on making it a regional inland waterway port.

This will mean that as a barge port, Kisumu will be actively integrated to the hinterland services across all the East African countries.

Only predictable supply chains and reliable logistics can support the renewed vigour to enhance manufacturing as a push-strategy for economic growth.

Jack Bwana is Trade, transport and supply chain consultant.