World Grain - March 2014 - 82

Ship
unloading
solution
TECHNICAL PROFILE

D

uring my over two decades of activities within the global ﬁeld of grain handling and storage systems, I have
had considerable opportunities to collect various market requests related to different rankings of the markets scene
contributories. I believe there is a neglected niche market for
small and medium-sized companies under the grain processors and providers of port handling services needing new,
modern, economic, mobile and transportable equipment for
unloading grains and oilseeds out of ships.
This niche market addresses the need for facilities which
comply with the currently applicable directives according
to ISO 14002 and constitute valid replacement equipment
for currently used grab shells and mobile pneumatic suction
units. Such mobile and transportable equipment, not permanently obstructing the jetty, provides for a relaxing harmonization in the mutual interaction between port authorities
and private appliers for operational concessions by meeting
relevant common interests.
GENERAL STARTING POSITION
The world's growing population creates an ever greater demand for basic foods such as cereals and oilseeds. The globalization of the economy slowly and inevitably leads to global
harmonization of standards of living and thus nutritional habits. The areas with growing demand are usually geographically far removed from the world's primary grain production
areas. That is why there is an increase of global trading volumes and related seaway transportation. The yearly increasing
mass ﬂows of grain by ships will increasingly stress the availability of bulk carriers.
According to the increased demand, the ship's rates per day
will race, irrespective of whether it is a seagoing day or a day
for berthing at destination, in order to be loaded or discharged.
The daily rates for the ship rental costs are heavily dependent
on demand and on the price for fuel. The entire logistic chain,
82

by Giuseppe Cifarelli

Innovative, mobile ship unloading
equipment can benefit small
and medium-sized ship
unloading operators
for the sea transportation of grain from the production regions
to the processing industry in consumer countries with rising
demand, is coming under ever greater pressure for efﬁciency.
This chain is very complex, and individually key elements of
it can be attributed, for speciﬁc countries, also to the public
authorities, such as agriculture and transport ministries and
port authorities,
Even the privatization of cargo handling facilities in ports
around the world is very advanced. This trend leads to building powerful trans-shipment facilities to shorten berthing time
of vessels. Such expensive investments can only be borne by
the public investors or by the private "main players" in the
global cereal trade market, whether independently or in conjunction with public institutions. That is why more centralized
trans-shipment ports for cereals aim their services at clients
dealing with large capacity for local distribution to the onshore processing industry in the region.
Smaller companies are struggling against this developing
trend. The smaller and medium-sized grain processing companies come under dependence of these centralized grain-hub
ports, provided they do not operate independently-owned
trans-shipment facilities.
The procurement of raw materials is of vital importance for
the grain processing industry, because it provides great poMarch 2014 / World Grain / www.World-Grain.com
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World Grain - March 2014

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