[ Atwerp Still out ahead AGHA/SEA ... ]

Atwerp Still out ahead AGHA/SEA Recacualtes European Ports
Centrality Index

Antwerp continues to be the most favourably located European port.
Although centrality ranking were first drawn up by the well-known
1980 study of the “Bremer Ausschuss fur Wirtschaftsforschung”, they
had become outmoded by the raising of the Iron Curtain and the
accession of new countries to the EU. New calculations were
therefore called for. Indeed in these changed economic
circumstances, with increasingly dynamic and unstable market
processes, centrality becomes an ever more relevant factor,
particularly as it is one of the few permanent features of the
competitive struggle between ports.
A joint study by AGHA(the Anterp Port Federation) and SEA(the Study
Centre for the Expansion of Antwerp) repeats and expands the original
research. Whereas the German study weighted the population figures
of 22 conurbations by their distances to only 13 ports, the new study
calculates an index for no fewer than 20 seaports on the basis of the
distances to 188 centres and conurbations with a population of over
200,000.
When the distance for road journeys are used, Antwerp comes out at
the top of the list for distances to conurbations both in the EU and
continental Europe as a whole. Ghent and Zeebrugge also do quite
well lagging behind Antwerp by only 2% and 5.1% repectively.
Rotterdam rated slightly higher than Zeebrugge with 5%, while the
figure for Amsterdam was 6.9%, Bremen 9.5%, Hamburg 13.9% and Le
Harve 17.1%. Other transport specialists prefer to view centrality
in terms of time, but here too Antwerp appears to lead the field.
Overall the ranking by time is much the same as the distance rank
with only a few ports changing position.
A limited comparative test(on the basis of the distance from 29
French conurbations to Antwerp and Rotterdam)showed that road and
rail distances are more or less comparable, which means that the
results of the survey can broadly speaking be extrapolated.
Nonetheless this does not apply to inland navigation, which offers
greater reserves of capacity, favourable rates and is the study can
be reached by barge. Antwerp offers inland navigation links to about
a third of them- a favourable figure compared to most other ports.