On what criteria is a port selected?

Traditionally primarily the standalone physical attributes of a port are considered such as

• the physical and technical infrastructure • the geographical location • port efficiency • interconnectivity of the port • quality and costs of auxiliary services such as pilotage, towage, customs, etc.., • efficiency and costs of port management and administration • availability, quality and costs of logistic value-added activities • availability, quality and costs of port community systems • portsecurity/safety and environmental profile of the port • port reputation • reliability,capacity, frequency and costs of inland transport services by truck, rail and barge.

But more recently people are starting to base the choice for ports on overall network cost and performance. This adds the next three points

• Time costs of the goods (opportunity costs linked to the capital tied up in the transported goods and costs linked to the economic or technical depreciation of the goods); • Inventory costs linked to the holding of safety stocks • Indirect logistics costs linked to the aggregated quality within the transport chain and the willingness of the various actors involved to tune operations to the customer’s requirements, e.g. in terms of responsiveness to variable flows, information provision and ease of administration.