Sustainability through cooperation
Sustainability is a popular buzzword these days. The Belgian port of Antwerp wants to take it seriously – and is bringing its multimodal Belgian neighbours on board to take numerous measures together.
The concept of sustainability is actually rather difficult to grasp in its entirety today, as it involves a bundle of measures that are necessary to achieve it. The port of Antwerp has declared its activities in the fields of digitalisation, sustainable growth and the optimisation of traffic flows to be amongst its strategic priorities for 2020; in mid-September the gateway published its fifth sustainability report.
Various measures for progress
The bundling of transhipment volumes in inland navigation has already been implemented in Antwerp for some time now (see ITJ Daily of 11 April 2019). This includes, amongst other things, transhipment at night, as well as investment in alternative fuels, such as hydrogen filling stations. The port authority’s development plans were given a massive boost recently when it ordered a hydrogen-powered tugboat.
The prototype will be equipped with combustion engines powered by hydrogen in combination with diesel fuel. This dual-fuel technology is combined with a particulate filter as well as a catalyst, which ensures that no CO2 is released during the combustion of hydrogen and nitrogen oxide, and particle emissions are reduced to a minimum.
The so-called hydrotug, which is being built by the Compagnie Maritime Belge (CMB), will be the first of its kind and is expected to enter operations in 2021.
In order to accelerate digital change the port has teamed up with various companies to set up a platform called ‘Nxt Port’. This solution has been designed to exchange data and enable partners to organise better and more cost-effective processes, as well as develop new products, thanks to the analysis of large amounts of data. Nxt Port cooperates across all modes of transport – working, for example, with Brussels airport’s cargo and operational platform, which is called Brucloud.
Digital change in multimodal form
In August the port also launched the new customs platform called BE Gate, together with the tax authorities, Belgium’s second-largest maritime port of Zeebrugge, and the country’s airports of Brussels and Liège. The platform allows the partners to process international freight traffic more rapidly – which facilitates the processing of the growing volumes of relatively low-value e-commerce consignments (see our ‘In Focus’ article on page 11 of ITJ 27-30 / 2019).
In addition managers are banking on fresh blood. Antwerp has secured a strong role as the home for new Belgian firms. The association ‘Startups.be’ has named the port city as one of the country’s largest business incubators, together with Brussels and Ghent. 14 of these young enterprises are active in the logistics and transport sector. The new firms also invest in areas that are relevant for the transport and logistics industry, such as the internet of things and the further optimisation of production processes. Eight new companies concentrate their activities on artificial intelligence projects.
The port hopes that these breeding grounds will provide it with numerous innovations which will help it further hone its ability to compete.
