In this context, the construction of a maritime hub in the Azores is of particular
interest, a logistics platform in the middle of the Atlantic, which specifically
makes it possible to offer a ‘premium’ service for cargo ships transporting freight
between Europe and the Americas.
The creation of this platform will enable the best use of the Region’s
geostrategic location, by taking advantage of the expected increase in
commercial traffic between the Americas and Europe as a result of the
expansion of the Panama Canal. This will also help reduce the level of
saturation of European ports.
In effect, the expansion of the Panama Canal will allow progressively larger
ships to cross between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. In this context, a
dominant flow of East-West circumnavigation traffic will tend to emerge,
connecting the West with Asia.
In this context, the Azores are a natural candidate for being the nerve centre of
this new traffic flow and the site for a major Atlantic hub. Based on existing port
and logistics conditions in the Region, as well as their links to airport structures,
this hub will provide value added services to support maritime transport,
especially international supply chains. This will be a new source of wealth and
employment in the Azores.
Available services could include naval repairs, terminals for containers and
particularly for perishable items, fuel storage, cold chain facilities, food supplies
and changes of crews, within a general range of support for operations and
logistics in global supply chains.
At the same time, these direct services will promote the existence of clusters
covering the chain of biological products and the environment, for example with
regard to packaging and the processing of products for distribution, both for
frozen food as well as fresh fish.
Along with these distribution and marketing services and the archipelago’s
geostrategic location in the North Atlantic, the ‘Azores Brand’ will also be an
asset, associated with an image of outstanding quality and sustainability.
Furthermore, this logistics hub can also be associated with the consolidation
and trans-shipment in the Azores of maritime traffic of vehicles, where shipping
between Europe and the Region could use smaller vessels and greater
frequencies while the route between the Azores and North America could use
larger ships with lower costs.