Business | The shipping forecast

商业 | 航运业预测

Investments in ports foretell the future of global commerce

港口投资：预测全球贸易的未来

It will be more high-tech—and more Asian

科技感更强、亚洲引领的未来

Driverless vehicles whizz across five new berths at Tuas Mega Port, which sits on a swathe of largely reclaimed land at the western tip of Singapore. Unmanned cranes loom overhead, circled by camera-fitted drones. The berths are the first of 21 due by 2027. When it is completed in 2040, the complex will be the largest container port on Earth, boasts PSA International, its Singaporean owner.

大士港（Tuas Mega Port）坐落于新加坡西部的大片填海造地之上，无人驾驶汽车在大士港的5个新泊位上呼啸而过，无人起重机耸立空中，安装摄像头的无人机绕其盘旋。这些泊位是预计2027年完工的21个泊位中交付的第一批。其所属公司新加坡国际港务集团（PSA International）自豪地宣布，大士港预计2040年全面投入运作，届时将成为全球最大的集装箱港口。

Tuas is a vision of the future on two fronts. It illustrates how port operators the world over are deploying clever technologies to meet the demand for their services in the face of obstacles to the development of new facilities, from lack of space to environmental concerns. More fundamentally, the city-state’s investment, with construction costs estimated at $15bn, is part of a wave of huge bets by the broader logistics industry on the rising importance of Asia, and South-East Asia in particular. The IMF expects the region’s five largest economies—Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand—to be the fastest-growing bloc in the world by trade volumes between 2022 and 2027. The result is that the map of global commerce and the blueprints for its critical nodes are being simultaneously redrawn.

大士港在两个方面对未来进行了展望。它体现了全球港口运营商在面对新设施发展障碍（包括缺乏场地和环境问题等）的情况下，如何运用智能技术来满足市场对其服务的需求。更重要的是，大士港的建设成本预计为150亿美元，大士港的建设成本预计为150亿美元，新加坡的这次巨额投资是整个物流行业押注亚洲的一波豪赌：看好亚洲，特别是东南亚的影响力日益增长。国际货币基金组织（IMF）预计东南亚的五大经济体（印度尼西亚、马来西亚、新加坡、菲律宾和泰国）将在2022年至2027年间成为全球贸易额增长最快的地区。这将重塑全球贸易格局和其关键节点的发展。

Across the planet, the expansion of seaports is becoming tougher, notes Jean-Paul Rodrigue, a professor of transport geo­graphy at Hofstra University in Long Island. Space in the right locations is scarce. Critics of development, especially among environmentalists, are not. Last year a big port expansion in Piraeus, Greece, was blocked by courts for failing to provide the right assessment of its environmental impact. One in Veracruz, Mexico, was also stopped on environmental grounds.

长岛霍夫斯特拉大学（Hofstra University）的交通运输地理学教授让·保罗·罗德里格（Jean-Paul Rodrigue）指出：纵观全球，海港扩张越来越难。有些地区位置合适，但空间十分有限，而发展批判者、尤其是环保人士却从来不缺。去年，希腊比雷埃夫斯（Piraeus）的一个大型港口扩建项目被法院裁定反对，理由是未能提供合格的环境影响评估。墨西哥韦拉克鲁斯（Veracruz）的一个港口也因环境问题被叫停。

One solution is to make existing logistics networks more efficient rather than merely larger. In April PSA finalised its purchase of BDP International, an American freight-forwarder specialising in supply-chain management, for an undisclosed sum (its previous private-equity owner had reportedly been looking for $1.5bn). Over the past two years DP World, an Emirati port operator, has bought two supply-chain specialists: Imperial Logistics, a South African firm, for $890m and Syncreon, an American one, for $1.2bn.

应对这一问题的方案之一是，提高现有物流网络效率，而非一味扩大规模。去年4月，PSA国际港务集团完成了对专门从事供应链管理的美国货运代理公司百运达国际（BDP International）的收购，收购金额未披露（据报道，BDP前任私募股东的意向价为15亿美元）。阿联酋港口运营商迪拜环球港务集团（DP World）在过去两年间分别以8.9亿美元和12亿美元收购了两家供应链专业公司——南非公司盈佩瑞（Imperial Logistics）和美国公司Syncreon。

Streamlining supply chains only gets you so far, however. At some point, new capacity will be needed. One way to achieve it is by reclaiming land from the sea. This requires feats of civil engineering—and is expensive. Singapore’s Maritime and Port Authority spent around $1.8bn on filling in the sea with earth for the first stage of the new Tuas facility. The massive Maasvlakte expansion, the second leg of which opened in 2015, has so far cost the Port of Rotterdam, an enterprise jointly owned by the Dutch state and the city government, around €2.9bn ($3.1bn).

然而，精简供应链的效果有限，有时还需要新产能。创造新产能的一种方法是填海造陆，需要高超的土木工程技术，且耗资巨大。新加坡海事和港务局斥资约18亿美元用于新大士港第一阶段的填海工作。迄今为止，鹿特丹港务局（由荷兰中央政府和鹿特丹市政府共同所有）已花费近29亿欧元（约31亿美元）修建马斯莱克特港区（Maasvlakte），该项目的二期扩建工程已于2015年投入使用。

Many ports are too deep for land reclamation to be viable. Some are therefore deciding to build upwards. In conventional set-ups, it is impractical to stack more than six containers on top of each other, and even then tall stacks require boxes to be shuffled around constantly to get hold of the right one. The shuffling can take more time than actually moving containers around the port and onto vessels, says Mathias Dobner, chief executive of BoxBay, a joint venture between dp World and sms Group, an engineering firm. In BoxBay’s “high-bay” storage system each container sits in an individual rack, where automated cranes can pluck them out individually. In Dubai’s Jebel Ali Port, run by dp World, this allows containers to be stacked 11 high.

许多港口的水太深，填海造陆是行不通的，因此有些人决定向上建造。按惯例，将六个以上的集装箱堆放在一起是不可行的，即便可以，也需要不断调整集装箱的位置。BoxBay的首席执行官马蒂亚斯·多布纳  （Mathias Dobner）说，实际上调整集装箱的位置要比在港口周围和船上移动集装箱用时更久。BoxBay是DP World和工程公司西马克集团（SMS Group）的合资企业，在BoxBay的“高架”存储系统中，每个集装箱都在一个单独的架子上，自动起重机可以把它们单独取出。在DP World旗下的迪拜杰贝阿里港（Jebel Ali Port），“高架”存储的方法能将集装箱堆到11层。

If you cannot build out or up, another option is to build elsewhere. That explains the rising popularity of inland “dry ports”, where goods are put in containers ahead of time, ready to be loaded onto ships as they arrive at the pier without needing to be stored for days at the port itself. This also lightens road congestion at the terminals. Around 150km (90 miles) from California’s coast, in the Mojave Desert, Pioneer Partners, an investment firm, has secured land and permits for such a facility, to ease traffic at the hopelessly inefficient ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

如果不能向外或向上建造，还可以选择在别处建造，这也是内陆“陆港”越来越受欢迎的原因。在那里，货物被提前装进集装箱，到达码头时就可以装上船，不需要在港口存放数日。内陆港还可以缓解码头的道路堵塞问题。在距加州海岸约150公里（90英里）的莫哈韦沙漠（Mojave Desert），投资公司Pioneer Partners已经获得了内陆港的建设用地和建设许可，以疏解洛杉矶港和长滩港的交通拥堵。

In 2016 psa entered a joint venture with Chinese state-owned rail operators to run a network of dry ports in China. Manufacturers load goods onto trains at one of 13 inland rail terminals for transport to the coast. Some of these terminals are rather a long way from any shoreline. Urumqi in Xinjiang province, home to one of them, is farther from the sea than any other city in the world, around 2,400km from the Bay of Bengal. In 2022 the International Finance Corporation, the private-sector arm of the World Bank, signed an agreement with another Singaporean logistics firm, ych Group, and t&t Group, a Vietnamese conglomerate, to develop a $300m inland container depot in Vinh Phuc, in northern Vietnam. The project, known as Vietnam SuperPort, will begin operations in 2024, providing some welcome relief in a country where exports have risen far more rapidly than inland logistical investments.

2016年，新加坡港务集团（PSA）与中国国有铁路运营商在中国合资运营陆地港口。制造商可以将货物运送到内陆铁路货运站（目前共13个）后统一运送到港口，其中一些货运站距离海岸十分遥远，如新疆省会乌鲁木齐是全球距离海洋最远的城市，离孟加拉湾2,400公里。2022年，世界银行旗下、专注于私营部门的机构国际金融公司（International Finance Corporation）与新加坡另一家物流企业叶水福集团（YCH Group）和越南T&T集团签订协议，打造越南“超级港”项目（Vietnam SuperPort），在越南北部的永福省建造内陆集装箱仓库，项目耗资3亿美元，将于2024年投产。越南出口额的增速远超其内陆物流投资增速，因此这一项目正如久旱甘霖。

All the dry-port development in Asia points to the second force reshaping the ports business: the shift of its centre of gravity eastwards. For decades Asian trade has tended to be one-way. Containers loaded with goods manufactured by the continent’s cheap labour sailed to advanced economies and came back largely empty. In the late 1990s more than 70% of Asian exports by value went to other parts of the world. A quarter of a century on, thanks in part to those trade flows and more complex supply chains, Asian economies have become big markets. Today nearly 60% of Asia’s exports flow within the region.

亚洲所有陆港的发展都指向重塑港口业务的第二股力量：重心东移。数十年来亚洲都是单向贸易：亚洲国家廉价劳动力制造商品，然后用集装箱将其运向发达经济体，返回时基本空箱。上世纪90年代末，亚洲出口额中逾七成流向世界其他地区。25年后，得益于单向贸易流和更加复杂的供应链，亚洲各经济体逐渐成为规模庞大的市场，现如今近六成的亚洲出口额在区域内流动。

The logistics industry is, like psa with Tuas, making a long-term wager that this share will grow. Logistics investments grew everywhere amid the pandemic surge in e-commerce. In Asia they ballooned. cbre, a property consultancy, forecasts that Asia (including China) will account for 90% of the growth in global online shopping between 2021 and 2026. That will require up to 130m square metres of new logistics real estate.

正如PSA对大士港一样，物流业也下了长期赌注，坚信这一比例会继续增长。疫情期间电子商务迅猛发展，推动全球物流投资，亚洲物流投资增长更是势不可挡。房地产咨询公司世邦魏理仕（CBRE）预测，2021至2026年，亚洲（包括中国在内）将贡献全球电子商务增长额的九成，这需要新建多达1.3亿平方米的物流设施场地。

A boom in investment in warehouses for storage and hubs for distribution and fulfilment in the region is already under way. Last year glp, a Singaporean investment firm specialising in logistics real estate, announced a $1.1bn fund focusing on Vietnam and a $3.7bn one focused on Japan. Its sixth China fund, worth $1bn, closed in early November. India is likely to get a boost as global manufacturers look to diversify their production away from China. The ports business of India’s richest tycoon, Gautam Adani, operates Mundra Port in Gujarat, the country’s largest, and 12 other ports and terminals across seven Indian states. Their combined annual cargo volumes have surged from 200m tonnes three years ago to 300m in 2022. Mr Adani is aiming for 500m tonnes by 2025.

现在已经兴起对该地区仓库和分销配送中心的投资热潮。去年，专业从事物流地产的新加坡投资公司普洛斯（Global Logistic Properties）宣布，在越南设立11亿美元基金，在日本设立37亿美元基金，11月初，第六期中国收益基金完成募集。全球制造商意欲将其产地从中国转移分散，印度可能因此获较大增长。印度首富高塔姆·阿达尼（Gautam Adani）经营着位于古吉拉特邦的印度第一大港——蒙德拉港，以及横跨印度七个一级行政区的其他12个港口和码头，总货运量已从3年前的2亿吨飙升至2022年的3亿吨。阿达尼先生的目标是在2025年达到5亿吨。

Investments by shipping giants are pointing in the same eastward direction. In ­October, while global shipping rates were plunging as the effects of pandemic-era bottlenecks eased, Mediterranean Shipping Company (msc), the world’s biggest by total capacity, announced five new intra-Asian services. Three months earlier msc had announced a $6bn joint venture with the government of Ho Chi Minh City to build a port there by 2027. It will be Vietnam’s largest port on completion. In ­August A.P. Moller-Maersk, msc’s biggest rival, completed the $3.6bn purchase of lf Logistics, a Hong Kong-based firm focusing on intra-Asian trade. The deal brought 223 warehouses and 10,000 employees across the continent under the Danish shipping giant’s banner, with an explicit focus on Asian consumers.

航运巨头投资也同样指向东方。今年10月，随着（新冠）疫情瓶颈有所缓解，全球航运费率暴跌，全球运力最大航商地中海航运公司（Mediterranean Shipping Company, MSC）宣布将在亚洲区内进行五项新投资。3个月之前，MSC刚刚宣布将与胡志明市政府成立60亿美元的合资企业，计划在2027年前在胡志明市打造越南最大港口。8月，MSC最大的竞争对手A. P. 穆勒-马士基集团（A.P. Moller-Maersk）以36亿美元收购总部位于香港、专门服务于亚洲内部贸易的利丰物流公司（lf Logistics），这家丹麦航运巨头借此收揽横跨亚洲的223个仓库和10,000名员工，并明确将重点聚焦亚洲消费者。

When seaborne trade boomed last century, investments in logistics reflected shifts in the global patterns of production and consumption. They are doing so again. And this time the future looks leaner, smarter—and more eastern.

上世纪海上贸易繁荣时期，对物流的投资反映了全球生产和消费模式的转变。昨日已然重现。而这次，未来看上去更精简、更智能，也更东方。

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