Ten years after Valletta Gateway Terminals took over the 30-year concession for Deep Water Quay, Magazine Wharf and Laboratory Wharf in Grand Harbour, little has been achieved out of the investment list promised by its first CEO.
In August 2006, then CEO Peter Darley said that two gantry cranes were to be installed at Laboratory Wharf, and that it was looking at extending the quay as well the hinterland. However, although the cranes were installed, the idea of excavating into the headland below Corradino to create space has not materialised.
Getting gate permanently moved to a wider stretch of access road is proving impossible
The cranes extended the capacity of the harbour to handle ships up to Panamax size, but this requires considerably more space on land. Mr Darley had hoped that the five hectare hinterland could be expanded to increase the throughput of containers from 34,000 annually to 150,000 – using the existing reservoir. Transport Malta figures indicate that in 2015, 81,000 containers were handled.
VGT was obliged through the concession agreement to spend a minimum of Lm6.7 million (€15.6 million) over the 30-year concession, starting with a Lm5.2 million (€12.1 million) injection. It also had to pay an annual concession fee of Lm350,000 (€815,000).
Sources said VGT has been doing all it could to find more space and it is using every centimetre of the current 10,400 sqm compound.
However, at peak times, the main operator, Sullivan Maritime, said that there was chaos, as the photo above shows, with a bottleneck at the gate controlling flows.
“The gate was recently moved temporarily to accommodate filming but getting it permanently moved to a wider stretch of access road is proving impossible, much to VGT’s frustration,” Sullivan Maritime managing director Ernest Sullivan said.
And the lack of space is frustrating for its principle, shipping line Grimaldi, which accounts for 90 per cent of the business there.
“Grimaldi’s services bring an average of 700 trailers a week, and hundreds of cars for transhipment. But we are turning away considerable amounts of work as there is simply not enough space. Ships handle thousands of cars so it is simply not interesting to them unless we can handle more than the current 1,000. We actually used the Freeport for one contract,” Mr Sullivan said.
“And with all this talk about Malta as a logistics centre, why are we not planning for value added work? We could be a distribution centre with pre-delivery services like cleaning cars and so on…”
The situation at times verges on the ridiculous: empty containers sometimes have to be parked off site and Mr Sullivan recounted an anecdote about one that was found parked in by cars during a football match.
That section of the Grand Harbour handles a mishmash of sectors, with grain and cement adjacent to each other, as well as fresh fish and scrap metal.
The extension of the quay would allow more efficient berthing – and sources warned that if another operator wanted to compete with Grimaldi, it would be very difficult for it to do so – particularly for Ro-Ro operations.
Repairs have been underway on Deep Water Quay – previously used for Ro-Ro – for the past three years but these are the remit of Transport Malta. Sources said it seemed unlikely that Ro-Ro would ever return there when the works are finished in a few years’ time, but rather that it would be used for cruise liners or passenger ferries.
It seems unlikely that Ro-Ro would ever return there when the works are finished in a few years’ time
VGT ignored questions about what investment it has made to comply with the concession conditions, or about what it intends to do in the coming years. It reacted, however, to a question about the impact of the acquisition in 2011 by Mitsui of Portek’s 55 per cent shareholding – which sources believe is behind the slow-down in investment.
“Portek has been a net contributor to our operations here in Malta, via Valletta Gateway Terminals, which has been a positive ongoing concern from inception and has played a key role for the local Maltese economy,” a VGT spokesman said.
“Going forward, both shareholders are determined to not only reinforce the contribution we make locally, but to support government initiatives in linking and developing trade between Malta and the Mediterranean Region at large.”