Evaluating container terminal competitiveness in the Hamburg – Le Havre range

Purpose - The present research aims to develop a Terminal Competitiveness Index (TCI) applied to the container terminals located in the Hamburg – Le Havre range, which is an area characterised for its intense container activity. The main components of the TPCI are productivity, foreland connectivity and infrastructure. Design/methodology/approach - To construct the index, the Benefit-of-the-Doubt and the Common Set of Weights methods in Data Envelopment Analysis are used to obtain a common weighting scheme for the evaluation of container terminals. Findings - Results show that connectivity and terminal efficiency are the most important factors for terminal competitiveness. The TCI has identified that APM Terminals Maavslakte II (Rotterdam), ECT Delta (Rotterdam) and MPET (Antwerp) turned out with the highest competitiveness score. Originality/value - Container terminals play a key role in today’s marketplace since they are the main infrastructure responsible for loading and unloading the containers full of intermediate and final goods. Therefore, the competitiveness of such terminals is crucial for shipping lines and importing and exporting companies, influencing their cost and schedule reliability. However, there is scarce literature studying the competitiveness of container terminals since the focus to date has been on ports as units of analysis. The terminal approach used allows the analysis of the competitiveness of terminals belonging to different ports but also between those located in the same port.