Is Port of Çandarlı going to be replacing Port of Rotterdam?
The Port of Rotterdam is 40 km long, 10 km wide, located in the Netherlands which is one of the northwest countries in Europe. Rotterdam is the largest container port in Europe and 10th largest container port in the world as well. Regarding to its geographical location, capacity and magnitude, the Port of Rotterdam has a vital importance in global trade. Because of serving as port cluster the port includes warehouses, industrial areas, distribution centres in it.
Figure 1: Port of Rotterdam
North Aegean Çandarlı Port is a new project that is started to build recently in Çandarlı area that is close to Dikili, İzmir and according to some authorities it is going to be 10th biggest container port in the world. Because of these rumours there are some comparisons between these two ports in below on the purpose of bringing a new perspective.
Figure 2: North Aegean Çandarlı Port Layout
In terms of the physical and technical features, Port of Rotterdam is much bigger than Port of Çandarlı in point of total area. Port of Rotterdam has established on an area of 105,560.000 m². It has 2,000 hectares of basins for a total of 10,500 hectares, including warehousing and industrial areas. However Port of Çandarlı is going to be established on an area of 2,500.000 m². Also Rotterdam has a depth of 24 meters and Çandarlı has 18 meters. Whereas quay length in port of Rotterdam is 65 km, this length is going to be just 2 km in the port of Çandarlı. Referring to this quay length in the Port of Çandarlı maximum 6 ships will be able to berth to port at the same time (this quantity may change according to length of the calling ships). In addition cargo-handling equipment at the Port of Rotterdam includes ten sheer leg cranes, 12 container cranes, 22 ship-to-shore bulk cranes, 25 floating cranes, 103 container gantry cranes, and 162 multi-purpose cranes. Differently from Port of Rotterdam, Port of Çandarlı is going to have 21 gantry cranes for now.
The Port of Rotterdam handled 441 million tons of freight in the year of 2012, including 11.9 million TEUs of container traffic. These figures make Rotterdam the fifth most important bulk cargo port in the word as well as the 10th largest container port. Rotterdam accommodates 30,000 oceangoing ships and 130,000 river ships each year. In 2012 totally 7,183.675 containers came into the port of Rotterdam and the total TEU was 11,865.916. Unlike Rotterdam only 4 million TEU is planned for Çandarlı for a year and also it is planned that this capacity will expand to 8 million and after to 12 million in the following years. 1100 vessels (200+ tones) are going to call to Çandarlı for a year according to some plans. The port’s TEU capacity is going to expand to 8 million at first, after to 12 million but there will no expansion in port area at all. In this case without making any expansion in the port area, the expansion of TEU capacity is an aim that is too hard to achieve.
Figure 3: Evolution of Port of Rotterdam
Cost of Maasvlakte area which includes ECT delta terminal inside was 1.55 billion Euros before years. Maasvlakte is just a small part of the port of Rotterdam. However cost of the entire port of Çandarlı is expected to be around 910 million Euros. 230 million Euros of this cost belongs to jetties. On the other hand port of Rotterdam has received 525 million dollars income in 2008. But planned income of port of Çandarlı is 220 million dollars if the port works with full capacity which is 12 million TEU.
Port of Rotterdam has a big hinterland which includes the whole Europe. Similarly to Rotterdam, Çandarlı is going to have a big hinterland by force of geographical location of Turkey. Port of Rotterdam is going to be a big port that will serve Caucasia, Middle East and Asia. All cargoes coming from these three areas will be collected in Çandarlı and after that will be distributed from Çandarlı to the other destinations all around the world and vice versa. In this case Port of Çandarlı is going to have a big hinterland by force of these factors and geographical location of Turkey and being a bridge between Anatolia and European side of Turkey. While the Port of Rotterdam connected with the whole Europe with highways, inland waterways and railways, Port of Çandarlı do not have any connection with anywhere even with Izmir yet. However railway and highway connections are being planned within the project.
Port of Çandarlı, which aims to take the place of Port of Piraeus, is being built in one of three areas identified by Japan experts who came to Turkey in 80s to identify suitable areas for a seaport. If that port had built in that times, today it would probably be one of the most significant ports in the world. Without taking into account the physical and technical features of it, supporting the transit cargoes is a must to accomplish the goals for Port of Çandarlı. However there is one thing that must be considered in this case. Two biggest transit cargo carriers in Turkey are MSC and Maersk. MSC is constructing its own seaport in Tekirdağ which is called AsyaPort. Maersk entered into an agreement with Port of Petkim in Aliaga for 18+18 years. For this reasons these two important carries do not need Port of Çandarlı and it is going to hard to accomplish the specified goals for Port of Çandarlı.
Consequently, when all these mentioned above have taken into account the entire port of Çandarlı cannot even a competitor for port of Rotterdam where have 3 important distriparks special distribution centres, industrial areas, 350 million customers and the features all above. Additionally port of Çandarlı is going to be a container terminal but port of Rotterdam is intended to almost all the cargo types. However if port of Çandarlı is compared to ECT Delta Terminal in Maasvlakte area in Port of Rotterdam, omega replica watches it can be easily seen that the Port of Çandarlı is going to be a big and important port for Turkey. ECT Delta Terminal is situated on the Maasvlakte right by the North Sea, the ECT Delta Terminal offers an unequalled water depth (16.65 metres NAP) and have 36 container cranes 2 inland shipping cranes at deep sea quay, 38 straddle carriers, 28 multi trailer tractors, 145 multi trailer trains, 9 terminal tractors, 3 reach stackers, 265 automated guided vehicles (AGV), 137 automated stacking cranes (ASC) and 3250 reefer connections. Even the largest container ships of 10,000 TEU and more can berth at the ECT Delta Terminal 24 hours a day. A vessel coming in from the North Sea can be at the quay in no time. Quay cranes have a capability to reach up to 22 containers. With regarding to these features it can be seen easily that the Port of Çandarlı can compare with ECT delta terminal, not Port of Rotterdam as a whole.
Editing by: Cem Kutukoglu
Added by: Onur Yavas
