The impact of the war in Ukraine will change the flows of maritime traffic in the long term, but for now it has not had an impact on the performance of Italian ports. The handling of goods in the first quarter of this year is impressive (118 million tons with a growth of 6.5%), confirming the post-pandemic recovery. However, the scenario is destined to change: the leadership of Asian maritime traffic is confirmed and the Mediterranean is becoming the terminal of the new “Silk Road” that crosses the macro continent from Beijing to London.
The card to play
In our sea the position of Spain and Morocco is strengthened, while Sardinia can play an important role because the concept of old ports is changing: the statistics on the goods transported are significant but it is a partial story. In ports, as the virtuous models of Northern Europe teach, today it is possible to incubate new businesses, start-ups, and Cagliari, with the tax concessions that will arise from the nascent free zone and the Special Economic Zone, will be able to attract investors.
The bridge to Africa
The Mediterranean has two and a half million square kilometers overlooked by twenty-eight sovereign states, including the smallest, Montenegro, which has an outlet of only ten kilometers. Italy has nearly eight thousand kilometers of coastline; making a quick calculation on the territorial sea that unravels around twelve miles from the coasts, on the exclusive economic zones and those of competence for the protection and monitoring of migrants, means that our country has competences in almost half a million square kilometers, a fifth of the Mediterranean. This is arousing a "new" attention for Africa, the continent most economically backward but ready to shorten the gap.
Not just transit
"The Italian port system must enhance its role towards Africa, which is a candidate to become an important player in world trade," said Giuseppe Catalano, coordinator of the technical structure of the Ministry of Infrastructures, during a recent meeting with the main operators of the port world. "We must not only be a transit place for goods from north to south and vice versa", he added, "but allow them to be enhanced and processed on our territory". An assist for the port of Cagliari which by the end of the year should finally give life to the free point in which to receive raw materials and semi-finished products to be assembled in a non-EU regime.
A growing market
The change in trade flows is already underway: the latest Istat data show that last year North Africa absorbed two thirds of Italian exports to that continent. Of the total value of Italian exports to Africa, almost 18 billion euros, 11.8 billion came from the Maghreb countries. Egypt grows (3.8 billion with an increase of 57% on 2019), Morocco stable (our exports 2.2 billion), Algeria rises which has made it easier to guarantee instruments on international payments while decreasing the volume of trade with Libya due to the geopolitical situation.
Containers by sea
National import-export travels by sea for 36%, second only to road transport which accounts for 49%. Obviously, oil and gas are at the top of our imports, while the first item of foreign sales concerns machinery. America is the first commercial partner to which we sell our products (32.4% of exports), while the main supplier by sea is China (27.2%) which last year preceded Turkey (8, 2%) and Russia (6.6%).
New energy hubs
The other side of the new narrative of ports is the energy issue: all maritime ports are starting to self-produce energy and if this were to be in surplus, it could be sold to the municipality to which the port belongs. The ports, therefore, will perform the new functions of energy hub. Today most of the airports are located near the arrival point of the pipelines and the South is a gigantic energy bridge of the Mediterranean: in fact, 30% of the world liquid bulk traffic passes through it. Cagliari, Messina and Augusta are among the top five Italian ports where sixty million tons of petroleum products pass, that is 38% of the national total. But the future is linked to innovation and start-ups, intermodality and green energy. The southern regions are candidates for the European green hydrogen hub due to their position in the center of the Mediterranean. Thus the blue economy will become more and more green.
Alfredo Franchini
