10 reasons to deal with Valencia Port

Valencia Port is terrific!

Alejandro Rubio and Sergio Ramírez
30/11/2020

Have you ever considered Valencia Port as a potential import-export hub? What about its prices and location? Valencia Port has an absolutely privileged location, an exceptional area of influence, great load and unloading activity, and its prices are quite reasonable. And the Port Authority of Valencia (PAV) does not forget about the environment either!

Just one fact, Valencia Port made history last September. MSC Sixin vessel achieved the incredible record unloading 3 304 containers and loading 5 397! According to Port Authority, it is the first time that a Port operation surpasses 8 000 TEU containers which means a “symptom of the economic recovery.” Check this 10 reasons and you will discover we say Valencia port is "terrific"!

1. Container affluence

According to the PAV, 81 million tonnes were loaded in 2019 with a growth of over 5.8% whilst the port traffic of Barcelona dropped by 0.12% in 2019 to 67.7 million tonnes.

In the second half of 2019, the port of Valencia reached the figure of over 50 million TEUs whilst the port of Barcelona reached a traffic of over 3 million TEUs. The difference is quite evident, don't you think?

Thanks to its successive extensions, its great connectivity and prices, the Valencian port competes with other Spanish and even European ports. Many specialised portals indicate it as one of the most important in Europe, above Bremen, Barcelona and Algeciras.

2. RoRo transport

In 2019, the port of Valencia will have exceeded the incredible figure of 10 million tonnes of RoRo traffic in total.

In spite of the pandemic and all the problems that have resulted from it, the Port of Valencia has managed to remain at over 9 million tonnes of total traffic.

When it comes to the ETU's, these have bordered on the figure of 400,000 units in 2019 and over 330,000 in 2020. On the other hand, TEU containers in 2019 were around 71 thousand units and in 2020 they exceeded 55 thousand. 

Finally, it should be mentioned that the Port of Valencia is the second port in the whole of the Mediterranean to have the largest number of automobile units in goods regime in 2019, only behind the port of Barcelona.

3. Vessels

The Port of Valencia's ship traffic in 2019 reached more than 5 100 ships and in 2020 this figure was reduced by only 10% thanks to the great capacity and reputation of the port, as other major Mediterranean ports such as Barcelona have reached figures 25% less in 2020 than in the same period in 2019. 

Moreover, if we add up the figures of the 3 ports of the Valencia Port Authority, namely Gandia, Sagunto and Valencia itself, the number of ships amounts to some 6 600 ships in 2019.

4. The Greenberth Project

An environmentally friendly port? With all the oil that ships spend? Well the truth is that the port of Valencia is leading Greenberth, an eco-friendly project with a budget of more than one million euros and co-financed by the European Union

The project arises from the need of previous projects to open the port to technological SMEs. The objective is to implement innovative solutions in terms of energy efficiency and green technologies; these solutions will be put to good use by the exchange of information between the 6 other reference ports of the Mediterranean.

Valencia Port Authority:

"Ports are major consumers of energy and, in this sense, port companies are devoting great human and economic efforts to the implementation of innovative solutions, to improve their competitiveness, and to have greater efficiency in their operations and in the management of the resources they consume. The project is aimed at the implementation of improvements in energy consumption with the support of the SMEs in the proposal of solutions, the implementation, control, monitoring and maintenance of the same".

5. Ambitious infrastructure plans

The Port of Valencia is, has been and will be a port capable of evolving and adapting to the growth in maritime traffic in a dynamic manner.

The APV is currently planning to extend its three main ports.

The aim of Port of Valencia is to develop an application for inter-oceanic container traffic whose objective is to be able to continue to offer a good economic service in order to maintain the inter-oceanic character that ensures connectivity with the markets of the 5 continents that characterise this port.

The Port of Gandia has also a pending extension which is going to focus on 2 main objectives: the creation of a commercial quay (1) and a marina (2). 

In this way the Port of Gandia will be assimilated a little more to the concept of the port of Valencia, thus achieving an increase in maritime traffic both industrial and commercial, as well as recreational and sporting.

The development of the Port of Sagunto and its respective infrastructure and extension plans are being developed this year 2020 and will be presented during the coming year

6. 3 ports, 3 areas of specialisation, 1 leadership

Each port managed by the APV specialises in one business area. The objective is to diversify the specialisation of the ports and to make the APV a highly competitive company.

The port of Valencia, specialised in inter-oceanic and urban traffic, has more than 15 000 employees providing services to more than 7 500 vessels per year.

When you will use this port

• The import/export of containers and interoceanic transit containers.
• Cruises and ferries.
• Recreational sailing

The port of Sagunto is one of the best rated for car traffic. It shares the first position with the ports of Santander and Pasajes. Its accessibility by road, the agility in the management for the allocation of the storage area in the terminals or the flexibility in the availability of non-standard timetables stand out.

In addition, the training of the workers for the correct handling of the cars and for solving problems within the port without involving an extra cost is very positively valued. 

When will you use this port?

• Steel, car and special transport traffics.
• Short distance containers.
• Bulk cargo.
• Recreational sailing.

Finally, the port of Gandía. The APV has recently invested in state-of-the-art cranes capable of loading 40 tonnes (the previous ones were only 1.5 tonnes). It has also managed to become the first port in Europe to be self-sufficient in energy thanks to the installation of a 2 MW photovoltaic plant.

When will you use this port?

• General non-containerised goods: paper and wood.
• Recreational boating.

7. Media references

The relevance of the port of Valencia has generated news in various specialised and non-specialised media.

One of the advantages of the Port of Valencia is its connectivity with other ports in the world according to the Port Liner Shipping Connectivity Index. This index values the connection of more than 900 ports in the world where the Port of Valencia achieves a score of 68.86. 

The connectivity index is an indicator of the competitiveness which facilitates relations between the different agents operating in the port. In 2019, the port operated with ports from 168 different countries (there are a total of 194 in the world)

The new normality, much more technological than before, does not go unnoticed by the port. The companies CSP Spain and APM Terminals have started to migrate their computer systems to the NAVIS4 programme. This investment in software will enable safer, more intelligent and sustainable operations. The NAVIS4 programme, one of the most advanced in the world, is a project in line with the objectives of sustainability or energy efficiency to which the port is so committed.

Many media report Valencia's port as one of the best. The figures for containers, ships and cars stand out. But its great logistical capacity, its competitiveness, the implantation of new technologies and its commitment to the environment, its diversification in different branches of specialisation or its rapid response to the covid, all stand out.

For this reason, the port and its workers are always looking for a way to surpass themselves by taking on new challenges and sending a very clear message to the world: The port of Valencia is the nucleus of Spanish maritime transport and an important axis for Europe and the world.

8. Foreland Valenciaport 4.0

Foreland Valenciaport 4.0 is a new tool that the Port Authority of Valencia places at your disposal so that you can find out the details of goods traffic in the ports of Valencia, Sagunto and Gandía.

The information is provided in three different reports depending on the type of goods: containerised, vehicles and a last global report of goods according to their form of presentation. Each report in turn presents the information on two different screens, the first with monthly data and the second with accumulated annual data.

9. Port services

1. Pilotage: advice to ship captains and floating devices to facilitate their entry and exit to the port and nautical manoeuvres.
2. Port towing: helps the maneuvering of a vessel following the instructions of its captain by means of other tugs.
3. Mooring and unmooring: collecting the moorings of a vessel, carrying them and fixing them to the berths.
4. Passenger embarkation and disembarkation: organisation, control and handling of passengers.
5. Passenger loading and unloading: the organisation, control and, where appropriate, handling of the means necessary for the reception of baggage on land, its identification and transfer on board the vessel and its placement in the place or places to be established, as well as for the collection of baggage on board the vessel from the place or places to be established, its transfer to land and its delivery to each of the passengers.
6. Ship-generated waste reception: collection activities of ship-generated waste, which are regulated by Annex I to the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, 1973
7. Loading, stowage, unloading and transfer of goods.

10. Giving it all against Covid-19... and successfully!

Not all the ports of the world have known how to react to the unexpected arrival of the pandemic and many of them have done so late or inefficiently. However, the Port of Valencia has known how to tackle this problem rapidly in order to minimise the problems arising from the covid and which directly concern the Port and maritime traffic. This can be seen in newspapers such as the following, which soon show how Valencia Port got down to work to reduce the effects of the covid crisis.

This piece of new is from the 16th March. A key measure to reduce the impact of the crisis was that from this day until 28th April, the APV donated 6.41 million euros to the suppliers of the 3 main ports of the province, such as Sagunto, Gandía and Valencia, and this figure was expected to reach 51 million euros. 

The measures were not only economic but also logistical.

As this news explains, the Generalitat Valenciana reached an agreement with Valencia Port to cede the Fuente San Luis for the provisional storage of all containers that accumulate in the port due to the reduction of maritime traffic and the closure of non-essential companies by the lockdown in our country, thus lowering storage costs for importers and exporters and reducing congestion in the terminals as the containers could not be delivered to the final client.

In addition, a cruise ship quay has been fitted out for the deposit of containers, this has been thanks to the APV in coordination with Customs. The search for new spaces is pending if required.

Valencia port is not only in charge of reducing the economic and logistical impact of the covid crisis, but also actively seeks to establish good health and hygiene measures to prevent any type of risk that may exist.

Valencia port is a fundamental link in the logistics and supply chain of industrial products, consumer goods and basic necessities that guarantees the correct functioning of companies and the Spanish economy.

All agents, operators, companies and people from the more than 800 companies and public institutions that carry out their activity with and in the port are contributing to this normality in port and logistics work with a commendable professionalism.

Physically or interconnected with the telematic services, Valencia Port shows to the world is a very tough nut to crack.