The project's aim is to develop, design and set effective Hinterland inter-modal freight transport nodes - dryports - which are fully integrated with the Gateway freight handling systems, to adapt a public concept to a private sector model, and to integrated dryports into the EU Motorways of the Sea concept.
The project includes the identification of suitable dryport land sites in the North Sea Region, to start a planning process that will support the increased number of logistics hubs, to assess the environmental and socio-economic impact of improved inter-modality, to develop a business model blueprint and to develop and start-up a IT system.
All project activities will contribute to connecting the dryports with the short sea shipping system to shift interregional transport from road to sea.
Västra Götalandsregionen Regionutvecklingssekretariatet
Falköping Kommun
Port of Göteborg
Banverket Region Västra Sverige
Vägverket Region Väst
Belgium
Port of Zeebrugge
Kamer van Koophandel West Vlaanderen
The Netherlands
Gemeente Emmen
Provincie Friesland
Germany
Institut Arbeit und Wirtschaft, Universität Bremen
Background and Aim
Aim The project aim is to develop, design and set effective Hinterland intermodal freight transport nodes -Dryports that are fully integrated with the Gateway's freight handling systems, to adapt a public concept to a private sector model, to monitor CO2 effects and to integrate Dryports into the EU Motorways of the Sea concept.
In a fully developed Dryport concept the seaport controls operations, but the terminal itself must not serve only one port as it can (should) be part of a larger network. Dryports are used more consciously than inland terminals in order to deal with increased (container) flows, with a focus on security and control through information and communication systems. The real difference is that the gates of the port are extended and that the forwarder sees the Dryport as an adequate interface towards port and shipping lines.
Background International trade has grown immensely since GATT started in 1950. The increase in international trade has exceeded the growth in the global production. A consequence is that more goods are transported over larger distances and more frequently than ever before.
Further action is needed to achieve the objectives of the EU White Paper on common transport policy. These objectives call for a return of the alternative modes to their 1998 share by 2010, and then increase this from then onwards. The increase in greenhouse gas emissions from transport threatens the Kyoto targets. Therefore, additional policy initiatives and instruments are needed.' ( quotes E.E.A. Copenhagen). Dryports could be one of those instruments.
Our industry around the North Sea must constantly develop its logistics systems in order to meet the geographic distance handicap to the rest of Europe. For exporting companies the added cost for this transport handicap equals to the labour cost. The necessity of controlling these logistics costs is therefore a question of survival.
Parallel to this, the logistics systems create a large environmental impact that needs to be effectuated both on a short term and long-term basis. Links and nodes for efficient transport and logistics operations are essential in this vision. Effective links between roads, rail connections and waterways and between nodes & terminals lead to increased logistics efficiency, lower costs, higher capital effectiveness and improved competition possibilities for the northern region in Europe.
The bulk of the freight flows that is transported by road goes to and from the immediate Hinterland of major Gateways. The dryport concept aims at these short and mid range road transport flows. New is to achieve a modal shift from road to rail and/or inland waterways by integrating gateway freight handling systems with hinterland nodes based on smart IT solutions.
Expected Outcomes
Three dryports set up in cooperation with gateways,
Gateway with a hinterland dryport structure,
Transformation of hinterland hubs towards dryports,
Monitoring-Instruments for gateway-hinterland movements,
Research material on rail potentials,
Estimation of CO2 claims of various modes of transport,
Motorway of the Sea scheme.
October 2010 - March 2011
The annual Dryport meeting and the international dryport conference was held on 21-22 October 2010. The conference brought together 130 delegates from 26 countries around the world, including over 40 speakers from a mix of academia and industry. Three publications (two journal issues and a book) are being edited and will be published during 2011, collecting the best of global research on dryports.
Several partners are involved in other ongoing Interreg North Sea projects, including LOPINOD, StratMoS and FOOD PORT. The lead partner of StratMoS prepares for their final conference in September in Brussels and in March it was agreed that Dryport will do one session at it. Working relations have also been been established with IVc projects. For example, Port Integration.
There still are two sites that are being developed; in Zeebrugge and in Falköping. The efforts continue to turn existing logistic sites into a Dryport, which is the case for Emmen/Coevorden and for Scotland.
April - September 2010
Work on the projects Containerised Cargo Carbon Calculator (CCCC) and Destination Origin study progressed. The CCCC completed phase one of development work and was shown to the Haven Gateway (UK) steering group and then trialled with a series of potential users, including Mitsubishi, Transport Direct, P & O Ferrymasters, and Deben Transport. All supported the concept and gave suggestions as to what more to include in Phase II. Phase II has been authorised and should be complete by January 2011. With regards the Destination Origin study Haven Gateway is still continuing to work with the industry to find a way of accurately showing the destination and origin of cargo within the UK.
The joint Dryport partnership agreed upon a statement towards the European Commission with regard to the TEN-T revision as a follow-up of an earlier response on the new white book for transport. The core comment in this reaction was that Dyports will be mentioned as important in the proposed core hubs thinking. TEN-T must not only connect major European areas but shall also deal with regional development.
October 2009 - March 2010
The project is now making considerable progress within each of the projects' work packages and by all of the project partners in developing their Dryport sites. Analysis of freight flows, strengths and weaknesses of the particular region, prepared tenders for land reviews, visualisation projects, rail identity systems or research all took place. The regional focus also continued with focus on tenders, research for and contacts with major potential Dryport sites.
The project partner Haven Gateway is working on a Containerised Cargo Carbon Calculator (CCCC), which will provide innovate development in the Logistics sector. Work on the CCCC is now underway and consultants have a number of major hauliers and business who will pilot the web based carbon calculation system. If successful the calculator will be able to show modal shift of actual cargo with those organisations using it. The system is expected to be ready and live by September 2010.
Co-operation with other Interreg projects took place including NS FRITS and StratMos. Links have also be made with the new Interreg IVB project Food Port Regions and Interreg IVC project, Port Integration, which is about developing links to the hinterland.
The Dryport partnership had two events. The Emmen workshop on Transport and Security took place in November 2009, where speakers talked about customs, relations to gateway Rotterdam and secure transport. The Swedish partner presented their rail identification project at the event.
The international Dryport conference also took place in 24-25 September 2009 in Harlingen, Friesland. Business Development, Friesland who organised the annual conference presented an extensive report at their home page with clips from radio and local television interviews. As a follow-up all local and international participants and interested (about 150 people in total) received the conference report by email, including a link to the broadcast made by local TV station 'Omrop Fryslân' on the conference. Interviews with Harlingen mayor Paul Scheffer and Dryport manager Dirk Harmsen appeared at the local TV news as opening news item of the daily news program 'Hjoed'.
The project has been using its project management group to enhance transnational co-operation within the project. The group is represented by all regions and in cases representatives for each partner in a region and was started in September 2009 in order to focus on the delivery of transnational outcomes. The group has now met twice and its main function has been to discuss and plan transnational co-operation and various partner engagements within the projects work packages.
April - September 2009
The project was able to provide a reaction to the preparation of the EU White Paper (future of transport), thereby ensuring their links to EU policy and the preparation of future policies. In addition, the project is busy working to develop links with similarly themed North Sea Region projects e.g the Stratmos and NS Frits projects and related programmes up to EU level. For example, contact has been made with a 7th framework project - INTEGRITY and RISING, a DG TREN project. The project was also presented to the NorthSea Commission providing specific input to their Transport Group.
The Dryport partnership had two large joint meetings. In May, the first 'site assessment' workshop was held in Brugge, Belgium, where 50 regional businesses attended the open day part of the workshop (in total 300 invitations were sent). In September, the first regular annual meeting took place in Harlingen, Friesland.
The Chamber in Brugges is the contacts with other Chambers in the partner regions. This has led to interesting Business to Business (B2B) movements in Brugges and the partner regions. On November the 30th a B2B meeting took place between the partner region of Haven Gateway (and their Chambers of Commerce of Suffolk and Essex) and VOKA in Brugges. Such exchanges are of high interest to Chambers in order to innovate, find new transport solutions, and not least to find new potential clients.
At the annual meeting in September the Province of Fryslân arranged a dedicated mini-congress about 'The strengths of an IJsselmeer alliance - inland waterways as a viable alternative mode of transport'. Almost 100 people from the transport sector, larger regional producers, gateway representatives and partners around the lake IJsselmeer attended the congress. The regional radio and TV covered the event.´
Until March 2009
The leading principle for the project is to involve each partner area despite its stage of Dryport development. The challenge is to lift the tendency of practical implementation to a higher level in order to make the underlying processes visible.
Furthermore, the Dryport project offers possibilities to extend the focus to international bilateral exchanges and promotes the regions at the some time as an international market. There has been a large interest in the development of Dryports and visitors have been eager to come, especially from the local and municipality level.
The project has carried out a SWOT-analysis that shows that there are various interesting efforts of a smooth transport system between Gateways and Hinterland.
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