The Valencian delegation, which has been present at the Transport Logistic China fair, explains the potentialities of Valenciaport before shipping companies and logistics operators of the Asian giant.
Aurelio Martínez has participated in a seminar on the Cantabrian-Mediterranean corridor, organized by Puertos del Estado.
The Valencia-Zaragoza line is already used by seven different rail operators.
Between the Valencian Community and Aragón, more than 6.5 million tons of goods are moved in land transport.
The improvements introduced in the road have allowed to go from a single groove to 30 weekly grooves.
Valencia, May the 17th 2018. – A delegation from the Port Authority of Valencia, headed by its president, Aurelio Martínez; its general director, Francesc Sánchez; and its commercial and business development director, Mar Chao; is this week at the Transport Logistic China, the most important logistics forum in the Asian continent, to promote Valenciaport as the best alternative to access the European market to the Chinese logistics community.
Aurelio Martínez explained to a large representation of Chinese entrepreneurs in the maritime logistics sector that Valenciaport is the leading port in Spain and the Mediterranean in container traffic. It is also the fifth European port and 29 in the world in this type of traffic and the fourth European port in terms of growth in the last ten years. “Without a doubt, Valenciaport -says Martínez- is the best opportunity for the Chinese logistics community to access to the whole Spain and Europe. Geographical reasons have contributed to this, since our hinterland covers Madrid, Murcia, Andalucía and other regions, representing 55% of the national GDP. It is the hinterland of a Spanish port that covers the highest GDP in our country since Barcelona covers 25.9%, Bilbao 39.1% and Algeciras 15.6%. In addition, the import-export weight of our hinterland represents 60% of the total Spanish economy, a figure much higher than other Spanish enclosures -Barcelona, 33.4%, Bilbao 37.9% and Algeciras a 11.4% “. Likewise, Martínez also stressed that the privileged geostrategic situation of the port of Valencia has been key in this leadership since Valencia is only 7 hours away from the main east-west interoceanic route.
Aurelio Martínez has also explained the technical reasons that led Valenciaport to become the leader in container traffic in the Mediterranean. In this sense, it has highlighted its mixed hub character, by combining import-export and transfer traffic, its important economies of scale derived from the broad connectivity, the largest in the Spanish port system with connections to 1,000 ports on five continents, and the best coefficients of centrality in the Mediterranean. In addition, the president of the PAV has also highlighted the commitment made by the shipping companies in Valencia since the three main shipping companies in the world – Maersk, MSC and Cosco – have their own terminal in the port of Valencia.
Cantabrian-Mediterranean Corridor
Aurelio Martínez has explained these competitive advantages of Valenciaport during his participation in the round table on the connection between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic axis, which has been organized by Puertos del Estado under the title “The Spanish Mediterranean corridor, an essential part of the new Silk Route (Obor): a competitive multimodal offer for China-Europe traffics “. In the course of this round table, which he has shared with Asier Atutxa, president of the port of Bilbao, Martínez highlighted the challenge that the PAV is making to improve this railway axis, which he described as “fundamental” in the Chinese port logistics community for the future development of Valenciaport.
Martínez explained that the Cantabrian-Mediterranean Corridor is a great opportunity to increase the hinterland of Valenciaport. As he explained, “this is an axis that receives almost a quarter of the Spanish population – around 10 million people – and a similar percentage of Spanish GDP in terms of foreign trade – more than 239,000 million euros. In addition, it will connect one of the main land logistics nodes (Aragón) with the maritime logistics nodes of Valencia and Bilbao “. In this regard, Martínez explained that the communities through which the Cantabrian-Mediterranean corridor runs have an interregional land transport flow of 9.46 million tons, of which more than 6.5 million tons move between the communities of Aragón and Valencian Community.
Martínez recalled that “traditionally, railway infrastructures in Spain have been designed following the radial model, which has made the connections between Valencia, Aragón and the Bay of Biscay difficult. However, in the last two years, there has been a significant change in this regard with an explicit support for rail freight traffic by Adif. All this has led us, the Port Authority of Valencia to make the decision to invest around 100 million euros in this railway connection”. Specifically, the PAV plans to invest 53.6 million euros in the rail line and 31 million euros more in the construction of the Valencia-Zaragoza rail access to the port of Sagunto. Currently, the APV has already signed an agreement with Adif to allocate 13.6 million euros for the improvement, expansion and construction of 7 sidings in the railway line with Teruel with capacity to attend trains of up to 750 meters in length and has planned to allocate another 40 million euros for improvement actions in this railway line, which are still pending to be consigned.
The president of the PAV has explained that the recent improvements introduced by Adif on the line have already had visible results. “Specifically, we have gone from having a single rail operator that uses this railway line to be used by seven different operators and has increased from one to 30 weekly grooves.” Likewise, Martínez recalled that the strategic importance of this railway line has led Cosco to acquire 51% of the Noatum terminals in Valencia, Bilbao and the railway operators of Zaragoza and Madrid.