Geography plays an important role in the setting of a transshipment market,
which is often at the crossroads of north/south shipping routes and where there is a
bottleneck such as a strait or a canal (Notteboom and Rodrigue 2010). Singapore is
such a case, where the major Asia—Europe shipping lanes are constrained to pass
through the Strait of Malacca. The Mediterranean has only two points of entry
(Suez Canal and Straits of Gibraltar), both of which have significant transshipment
and interlining activity (i.e. Tanger Med and Algeciras at the Straits of Gibraltar
and Port Said, Damietta and Alessandria at the entrance of the Suez Canal). Ports
that are the center of the basin show significant sea–sea transshipment flows
222 J.-P. Rodrigue and T. Notteboom(e.g. Gioia Tauro and Taranto in the south of Italy, Marsaxlokk in Malta and
Cagliari in Sardinia).
Although the Caribbean has a large exposure on the Atlantic side, it has one
outlet for the Pacific, the Panama Canal, which has significant transshipment
activities both on the Atlantic and Pacific sides. The North Sea and the Baltic are
another transshipment market, but of lower incidence. That is because transshipment
activities in ports like Rotterdam, Antwerp and Hamburg are combined with
large gateway flows to the core regions in the European hinterland (Fig. 10.1).