The table of fees for the Panama Canal reads like a crossword puzzle. The story is not just about the type and size of the cargo ship and its load. Also costs for pilot on board, tugs in the port or locomotives and mooring in the lock chambers have to be combined to calculate the price for passage.
Little money comes at the end of this case but not out. “For a transit on a container ship with a maximum of 5000 TEU we must currently pay up to 450,000 dollars,” says Karsten Warncke, responsible manager for networks at Germany’s largest shipping company Hapag-Lloyd. The abbreviation TEU stands for Twenty-Foot Equivalent Unit and thinks 20-foot standard containers, converted just under 400,000 euros are due.
By comparison with 133,000 euros of the Suez Canal is only a third as expensive, the Kiel Canal with a maximum of 20,000 euro almost a bargain. Since 103 years ships sail through the Panama Canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific or vice versa, saving themselves the long journey around Cape Horn at the tip of South America. The fees are determined by the State of Panama, paid by the shipowners.
More than twice as large ships can pass
Now the new Panama canal is opened with much larger sluices and deepened waterway, and with a surprise: the transit through the new facilities is not expensive. “Converted to a standard container that charges cheaper by as much as five to ten percent,” explains Marine expert Warncke an example.
For the expansion to more than twice as large ships pass through the second main channel of the world. For a cargo ship with 10,000 TEU Hapag-Lloyd calculated 800,000 dollars in fees. Shut Projected to each container, which is a significant savings. Because that want shipowners: using ever larger container ships, the costs per transported unit lower. But the old Panama Canal was too narrow for ship giant of the new generation and too shallow.
As reason for the pricing policies of Panama suspected Manager Warncke not necessarily a new generosity of the Central American governments towards the Marine. Rather, the concern is likely to stand behind that shipping companies remain at a high additional fee for their giant ships but in the earlier ship sizes and continue to drive with 5000 TEU freighters through the channel.
The hope of more goods exchange
Finally, these ships are due to too low transport demand for relatively little money or to have daily rent. In addition, companies can use their large vessels further broken the way around Cape Horn, if you the way through Panama is spoiled with excessive costs. “We expect that the Canal Authority will look the end of 2016, how the fees look like in the coming years,” says Warncke. First of all is probably but everything be done to ensure that the launch succeeds.
The stakes are high: the future of the country Panama to the development of world trade and to the attractiveness of the trade routes. Today, six percent of global goods traffic is handled via the Panama Canal, last year there were 300 million tons of goods. This number, as economists hope the country is set to double when the Marine accepts the new channel and uses.
With the expansion of the capacity is at least already doubled. This refers less to the number of ship passages as the vessel sizes. Because now fit 96 percent of the world moving vessels through the lock installations. Hopes are high that the new channel will provide the trade with the Americas a boost. As a proof, are being developed both on the east coast as well as on the west coast of the United States seaports for billions of dollars. Also in Latin America expand Cartagena in Colombia, Callao in Peru and San Antonio in Chile their port facilities.
At times, 40,000 people work at the canal
The conditions for growth of global trade are now created: Panama completed with a comparatively small delay of less than two years, a project of the century, the only one so far in these dimensions. The construction of the new channel began in fall 2007 has temporarily employed 40,000 workers.
you have cleared 150 million cubic meters of earth and rubble. At the locks they have installed twelve million tons of cement and 192,000 tons of steel. The existing lock installations two other much larger lock systems are now added. They have three lock chambers, each chamber is 427 feet long, 55 feet wide and 18 feet deep. In addition, the ships sail on entirely new access channels that are at least 218 meters wide at any point to the lock basin.
Because that makes the project so special: The new arrive not replace the old, but she added. And so the big ships do not get stuck on the ground on their way through Panama in the mud, the builders have deepened the fairway in Gatun Lake and widens up to 366 meters in the bends. The lake is part of the channel path through the country.
Each lock gear go 200,000 liters of fresh water lost
is responsible for all that a consortium called Groupe Unis pour le Canal, which in turn is managed by the Spanish construction group SACYR. Involved in the construction are also the Italian company Impregilo, Belgian company Jan De Nul and Constructora Urbana of Panama. But even this is obviously one of such a huge project to: The estimated two years ago $ 5.3 billion construction costs have recently increased by 1.6 billion dollars.
About the payment of the sum of the State Panama and the consortium argue before arbitrators in Miami. The costs are, however, counterbalanced by a high income. Last year, the canal company ACP has taken about two billion dollars in fees, which were four percent more than last year. This company with its 9000 employees by the public administration is the biggest employer in Panama.
However, the operation of the Panama Canal also extremely expensive and not comparable with other artificial waterways such as the Kiel Canal or the Suez Canal. Because unlike ships there in Panama must be spent downhill uphill in several stages and lock chambers or.
In order to travel the 82 km long canal, the freighters are merely brought them to an altitude of 26 meters. This is associated with considerable effort: on the outer sides of the locks drive locomotives up to 45 degrees slopes along and pull the ships in the pool inside. Approximately 100 of these locomotives with their 1000 hp engines and hundreds of modifiers, such as the lock workers are called, are in use every day. Each lock gear go about 200,000 liters of fresh water lost, which is taken from the Gatun Lake. This artificial lake is fed by the River Chagres.
Any bottleneck will always give
Thanks expansion can Panama play its natural advantage as the narrowest point between the Americas and ideal link between the Caribbean sea and the Pacific Ocean again. Last year around 14,000 ships passed through the canal, which corresponds to 35 to 40 passages every day. The transit time of container ships an average of 24 hours.
The Panama Canal is especially important for the supply of the American east and west coasts. A voyage from New York to Los Angeles is shorter by 13,000 kilometers when it performs Panama held around Cape Horn. For the way from New York about to Yokohama in Japan a similar route shortening applies. Finally, US ships can do instead of toward the Suez Canal to the East relatively quickly through the Panama Canal to the West to the Far East on the way. For Europe arise primarily in shipping to South America benefits.
The shipping companies, however, have been named the next problem. Thanks to the expansion of the channel they can now use up to 14,000 TEU drive large container ships through Panama. But if they want to send this ship giant on routes around Asia on the east coast of the United States continued in the western United States, they fail in another: The “Hamburg Express” Hapag-Lloyd about does not fit under the New York’s Bayonne Bridge through which seals off the access to the important port. Any bottleneck there will be for the largest container ships ever.
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