How geopolitical tensions change the nature of Liguria's ports

Despite the persistent uncertainties in the international economic scenario, cargo traffic in regional ports increased by 0.8% in 2024, recovering slightly after the 4% contraction observed in 2023, with good results achieved in the fourth quarter of last year. Handling grew by 7.3% at Savona-Vado, while it decreased at Genoa and La Spezia. But if the Ligurian ports are showing resilience to international geopolitical storms, these are changing the nature and also the modalities of traffic. This is testified by a Bankitalia focus, which states, among other things, that over the past year, 'both solid and liquid bulk have decreased by more than 8%'. While containerised traffic, counted in teu (a unit of measurement equal to a 20-foot container), "increased by 4.6% overall, thanks, however, to the strong increase in transhipment, which reflected the reorganisation of services and routes due to the continuing tensions in the Red Sea". In short, in Ligurian ports, transhipment of containers from larger ships to smaller feeder units has strongly increased (it can be said, indeed, that it has sprung up, because previously it was a marginal phenomenon). This is a fact on which to focus attention because the region's ports of call have traditionally been gateways, i.e. ports of entry for containers.In 2024, moreover, the Bank of Italy report notes, even the main European ports achieved a recovery in the containerised component, more accentuated for those in the western Mediterranean. In the first quarter of this year, then, the total cargo flows transited in the regional ports remained almost unchanged compared to the corresponding period of the previous year, while those of containers accelerated (+7.3%).As for passengers, those in transit in 2024 in the Ligurian ports "decreased by 6.1%, after the strong growth recorded in the years following the pandemic. Compared to 2023, the number of cruise passengers fell by 10.9%, also due to access restrictions connected with the work to adapt the docks in Genoa and La Spezia, while the number of ferry travellers fell less intensely (-1.4%)".Bankitalia also photographed the relevance of the Ligurian port system, whose quays "play a role of primary importance within the national port system: according to Assoporti data, in 2024 they handled more than 50% of the containers transited at the Italian ports of final destination of goods. Thanks to their geographical position, they also represent the main sorting point for extra-EU exports of the North-West regions and some provinces of North-Eastern and Central Italy".On the basis of available data, Bankitalia notes, "between 2010 and 2022 the share of regional ports on the value of national extra-EU port traffic remained substantially stable, at around 47% for exports and 28% for imports". Moreover, "among the different categories of goods exported through Ligurian ports, machinery was the most important (just under 30% of the total in 2022, although down by about 10 percentage points compared to the beginning of the period), followed by chemical-pharmaceutical products and foodstuffs (the latter almost doubling between 2010 and 2022)". Among imported goods, the most relevant were hydrocarbons (more than 20% of the total), chemical-pharmaceutical products and electronics.As regards the main foreign markets served by Ligurian ports, in 2022 (the last year for which data is available from the Customs Agency), "almost 28% of exports went to the United States, a share that grew strongly compared to 2010, while China was the second most relevant destination with 7.5%. Among the sales to the USA, those of machinery, food products and plastic products were particularly notable; exports to China, on the other hand, mainly concerned machinery and chemical products".As for imports, almost 40% of imported goods, reports Bankitalia, "originated in China; the share held by the two countries that follow, the United States and India, was instead much smaller (about 5% each). Almost a fifth of imports from China concerned electronic products; while over 40% of purchases from the United States were hydrocarbons".