Container terminals and utilisation of facilities.

Abstract

In this article, the authors outline production frontiers and efficiency coefficients for container terminals. The authors stress that efficient operations of container terminals are important in order to realize high productivity and low costs per unit of output. The authors report on a technical efficiency analysis study based on a database of European maritime, rail, and barge container terminals. The study include the terminal equipment, four forms of handling systems, the terminal berth, personnel, size of the container terminal, production process bottlenecks, and terminal activities. Results show large differences in terminal efficiency among maritime container terminals. Those terminals that specialize in containers only perform better than terminals that also handle non-containerized goods. When rail terminals and maritime terminals are compared, results show that the variation in the technical efficiency for maritime terminals is larger. In addition, terminals in larger ports are shown to be more efficiency than terminals in smaller ports. No systematic differences per country are found.