Hamburg terminal meets certification standard

Hamburger Hafen und Logistik's Altenwerder facility at the Port of Hamburg said today it is the first marine container terminal in the world to be certified according to international standards.

The performance standards were developed by the non-profit Global Logistics Institute and released in February. The tool was designed as a way for shippers and others to benchmark a container terminal's ability to efficiently and safely move cargo through its facility.

To first qualify for a Container Terminal Quality Index (CTQI) audit a terminal has to implement a management system to ensure a continual improvement process. Auditors then assess 40 aspects of a terminal's performance including equipment quality, such as the average age of cranes; and operational standards, such as the opening hours of the road gate, amount of time shut down, ship productivity and intermodal and inland waterway connections.

German certification society Germanischer Lloyd Certification conducted the audit under an arrangement with the New York-based Global Logistics Institute. Audits are good for one year and Altenwerder will be re-evaluated in June 2009.

Terminals are scored on a 100-point scale and receive certification if they achieve 50 points or more. Outsiders will only know that a terminal met the minimum score for certification because the results are confidential and only shared with the terminal itself.

The Global Logistics Institute agreed not to publish the audits because terminal operators feared they would be used against each other as a competitive weapon to convince cargo owners to switch ports, Chief Executive Officer Kieran Ring said in San Francisco Tuesday following a presentation on CTQI to marine terminal managers and suppliers at a customer conference hosted by software provider Navis.

Ring said the Institute instead is encouraging certified terminals to share the results of the audit with beneficial cargo owners or carriers at their request.

Until now there has been no common language for shippers and carriers to measure the performance of container terminal. The CTQI is equivalent to a star-ranking given to hotels by travel groups that let consumer抯 know in a snapshot that the establishment meets a certain level of quality.

Container facilities tout how many boxes they can move per hour to and from a vessel, but that number might mean the boxes moved on the best vessel during the best hour of the day, said Gustaaf De Monie, a consultant for the Antwerp-based Policy Research Corp., who was involved in developing CTQI. Another difference is between terminals that measure their performance from the first to last lift and those that measure their speed from the time a vessel enters the harbor, which may include external factors beyond the terminal's control.

Port authorities are expressing interest in the standard because they see it as a way to simplify their concession and lease negotiations. Instead of dickering with each terminal operator about volume goals and other requirements each time a contract comes up, the port can simply require that a terminal must be certified on an annual basis, De Monie said. Over time, as technology improves, the audits will become more stringent, he added.

Other groups, such as the World Bank, that invest large amounts of money in infrastructure projects that are concessioned to private operators, can also point to the standards as a condition for granting terminal operating rights, he added.

The GLI is meeting resistance from some marine terminal operators who believe that port authorities will use the standards to force stricter conditions on how they run their concessions. But De Monie said the pressure to be considered a best-in-class high-throughput, high-performance port will eventually push many terminals to seek certification.

As the standards develop to factor in size, lower performing ports will be brought into the process, he predicted.

Ring told the Navis audience that the Global Logistics Institute is now starting to develop a quality indicator metric for warehouse operators and eventually wants to create standards for each stage of the supply chain.

Heinrich Goller, managing director of HHLA Container Terminal Altenwerder GmbH, said going through the certification process was an educational experience that led it to learn additional lessons and best practices that could be applied to improve operations at the facility.

Altenwerder is one of three container terminals operated by HHLA at the Port of Hamburg, which served as an advisor to GLI in developing the standards.

Source: Transportweekly