In the period January to end October 2023, Albania’s Durres container terminal handled 154,000 teu, a 35% over the same period in 2022. This figure exceeds the annual total for 2022 and at the time of writing, early December 2023, volumes remained on a growth curve with a record total for the year expected.
The terminal, under the management of Mariner Adriatic, part of the Hili Company, has been and continues to be the focus of a significant development programme designed to facilitate traffic growth and enhanced terminal performance. The programme is multi-faceted, a central feature being a focus on developing an organisation and underlying information technology structure with streamlining day-to-day operations and expansion needs uppermost in mind. Mariner highlights the implementation of the Navis N4Saas terminal operating system, Navis’s cloud-based solution, as a key step and points out the Durres Container Terminal was the first terminal to go live with this solution in 2021.
Currently, the IT architecture is also about to achieve another productive step with the installation of an automated gate system employing Optical Character Recognition (OCR) based access control. The system, which will be used to identify both trucks and containers entering and exiting the terminal gates, is set to go live imminently with multiple benefits anticipated. Minimisation of queuing at the gate, improved accuracy through reduction of the possibility of human error and Real Time Damage Inspection via high resolution images of each vehicle and container are particularly cited in the latter respect. Images are available to cargo owners via the terminal’s Customer Access Portal interface.
The Customer Access Portal has also been the focus of upgrade work, the latest development being to identify container locations in real time with the objective of assisting clients to efficiently plan the receipt of their containers. The system overall enables clients to view containers in the port system in real time.
Human factor & hardware
Staff training has, as might be expected, also been key to the terminal’s overall progress. Mariner reports personnel have been trained and become fully conversant with the Navis N4Saas and other systems put into place to advance the management of the cargo flow. Underpinning this has been the development of the Human Resources function to fill various new roles in the organisation and planning of the entire container operations cycle.
At a more practical level, there has also been attention paid to aspects such as training on equipment handling to increase the pool of trained operators and thereby maximise operational flexibility overall.
