There is something I love about English and is that it can be quite literal sometimes… Transhipment (in between ships), landing (lands), containerisation (you put it in a container)… no one should get confused about the meaning of those!
port transhipment is here to stay for while i reckon.
With the carrier fleet ageing and getting smaller many people were predicting the slow demise of in-port transhipment, and the rise of landing and wharf side sorting and containerization. The number of containers with tuna arriving in Bangkok has increased a lot over the last years, as from the processor side is great for production planning as they know they have 20—25 tons of one species and one size there… so is easier than having to sort at factory arrival. The cynic in me also says that since the introduction of PSM in Thailand, is much harder to bring in fish of dubious origin by carriers, as they fall under their PSMA responsibility… while if the fish was containerised abroad, then it corresponds to the responsibilities of the country where the landing happened.
Yet the COVID situation has pushed back the “traditional port transhipment” as a safe bet and maybe extends the life of carriers for a while incentivising the constructions of some new ones. If we didn’t have them, they wouldn't be any canned tuna in the market by now. And if there something that conservative industries (like fishing) have learned, is not to have all your eggs in one basket, and without no vessels landing in most pacific island ports, very little containerisation is taking place.
Around 520 carriers are in service worldwide, most of them built between 1988 and 1994, with very few new conventional reefers built since 2000. Of the vessels built between 1980 and 1990, close to half have been scrapped. The average age of scrapped vessels in recent years has been between 30 to 45 years old... so many vessels are getting to the end of the working life.
In the WCPFC Record of Fishing Vessels, there are around 420 ‘fish carrier’ vessels authorised. Panama has the largest fleet 123 vessels, then the Philippines with 111, Japan with 85, Korea with 31, Liberia with 21, Taiwan with 16, China with 12, then other smaller States (including Vanuatu and Kiribati) have around 20 registered vessels between them…. so is not a small fleet. Of the 232 carriers on the register above >1,000 GT in March 2019, an estimated 140 are active in transhipping fish from the WCPO. Of these, over half were flagged to Panama. Of the remaining fleets, Korea had the next highest number of active vessels with 27 (owned by only 7 companies), followed by the Philippines (14 vessels) and China (9 vessels).
With few processing facilities handling purse seine fish in the region, transhipping is the most common way to getting the fish from the grounds to the processing centres in Asia (Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines) and Ecuador. The big 3 trading companies (FCF, Trimarine and Itochu) charter carriers and place them in the in a few ports (Majuro, Pohnpei, Rabaul, Funafuti, Honiara, Kiritimati and Tarawa) depending on shifting fishing grounds and licensing conditions. Some companies (mostly from Taiwan and Korea), operate their own carriers in conjunction with their vessels. How they choose where to tranship is described here
Landing, sorting and containerisation is enticing for processors and provides some benefits for the ports where it happens (like Majuro, Kosrae (FSM), Apia (Samoa) and Noro (Solomons), as it provides employment opportunities, furthermore it facilitates monitoring by the port state authorities in terms of legality (not unload unless proven legal as we do in Majuro) but then also volumes and species… since containers have a maximum loading capacity (20-25 tons, depending on freight company) and fish classified before loading.
Yet on the other side, from the EU market access, only fish landed in the Solomons (at the moment) can maintain eligibility for the EU market even if processed in an EU authorised country from the sanitary perspective… RMI, FSM and Samoa are not authorised from the EU perspective… so if fish touched the wharf, it loses eligibility… this a bit ridiculous tho… but so its… so a Taiwanese PS can tranship in Majuro’s lagoon to a Panamanian carrier, and that fish is ok the be processed in Bangkok for the EU market. Yet if it touched the conveyor of a loader in Majuro’s wharf, even if for the 5’ before is in a refrigerated container, it cannot be processed and go to the EU…
So in RMI, for example, we are setting up a food safety body (the CA-Competent Authority) that needs to be equivalent to an EU member country (ie systems equivalent to those of Luxembourg), even if we never are going to process anything there that will do directly to the EU (too far and too expensive) for the few minutes that fish is going to be in the wharf… quite bizarre… but that is bureaucracy for you!.
Even if containerization can be done very fast 1 hr per contains and with two star loaders you could be in doing 400 tons a day, and employing locals.
The next thing that this also requires a good port with sufficient electricity to maintain the containers refrigerated and a good container vessels port, depth, facilities and schedule… other than Noro, is quite hard to find that combination in the Pacific at the moment.
And while not all governments where transhipment takes place takes place seems to be in the position to cover these additional responsibilities and costs., sometimes being conservative pays… Under the present COVID 19 scenario… even if they had those rather expensive items and infrastructure, they could not be using it at the moment…
Putting all these issues together, transhipment seems to have getting a secure investment boost for a while longer… as I’m sure this is not the last pandemic we will face.
Further Explanation on the EU Market access side!
I had few people asking me to know more about the EU status from the sanitary perspective of the transhipment country vs the landing country, so here is and addendum
Under transhipment (in between two vessels) as long as the vessels are from EU authorised countries and are listed as approved by the flag states (https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/sanco/traces/output/non_eu_listsPerActivity_en.htm#) it does not matter where it happens and there is no requirement for the port state to be and authorised country (i.e. Majuro/RMI). From the EU IUU Catch Certificate side, the port state has to sign Section 7
Now if that fish is landed and put into containers (this is not transhipment!) then the country HAS to be authorised. so if the fish was landed and containerised in Kosrae (FSM), Majuro (RMI) of Samoa, it becomes not elegible for the EU market. So the processing establishment in any EU authorised cou ntry (like Thailand, Vietnam, etc) has to separate this non EU elegible fish from the EU elegible one (see page 31 of the publication below for details). The EU IUU Catch Certificate is totally blind to the port of unloading (incredible but true!), so there is no involvement of the port state in the case of landings that then will be processed somewhere else… the flag state has to (somehow) validate the legality of the catch without involvement or counter validation of the port was landed (and the coastal state/s where it was fished), then a copy of that Catch cert will go to the processing state and processing statements will be produced there for the volumes processed.
For how the EU sanitary and IUU systems works (or shopuld work) you can always refere to this boocledt I wrote in 2016. EU Market Access a Fishery and Aquaculture Products.