Signed the agreement that allocates to the Bettolo consortium the management for 33 years of the new container terminal of Calata Bettolo in Genoa

EDITORIAL

The Commissioner of the Commissioner of the Port of Genoa

Comprimary Signorini of Toti

There will also be-as always-winners and losers at the conclusion of the negotiations that led to the signing of the concession contract relating to the new container terminal of Calata Bettolo, in Genoa. As is often the case at the end of a strenuous negotiation many of the protagonists of the affair have the merit of being able to reach the finish line : that of finding an agreement between the institutions and the company that will have to manage the new ones. benches. Among them there does not appear to be the CEO of Group Investment Port, Giulio Schenone, judging at least by the secluded dampage that reads on his face in the photographs taken on the occasion of the signing of the contract, countered to the satisfied expressions of the representatives of the public administrations who have insisted that they come to the signing of the understanding, threatening to put everything back in the game.

Paolo Emilio Signorini also smiles in the pose of the rite. But among the supposed winners, the one that has less to rejoice seems to be the chairman of the Port System Authority of the Western Ligurian Sea : not for how the story of the assignment of the management of the new terminal, of course, has ended. that Signorini lived through the final stage having been placed at the helm of the port institution in the last days of 2016, but for how it came to this destination. In these months, beyond his actual role in the negotiations, Signorini appeared to be the passive spectator of initiatives taken for him by the president of the Region. It appeared that, flying or chartered, he had to adapt to situations he had not generated. To many it appeared that at the helm of the port there was Toti, not Signorini.

Our readers know that inforMARE believes that the reform of the port legislation implemented in the summer of 2016 has determined the permanent commissioning of the Italian Port Authorities, now the Port of System Authority.

The disenacture with which local institutions in Genoa have appropriated the tasks attributed to the president of the Port System Authority of the Western Ligurian Sea highlights how easy it is to subject the same president to management. of the port institution, subtracting functions to him of his own. Whatever the abilities and skills of the president of the AdSP, as demonstrated in the case of Signorini, certainly in possession of the qualifications and personality useful not to get away with spaces of his / her relevance.

This proves once again-in our view-how deprivate the assignment assigned to the presidents of the Port System Authorities from the reform is. Presidents chosen directly by the Minister of Infrastructure and Transport and appointed in agreement with the President of the Region that easily from these can be excavated. It demonstrates how easy it is for them to be appropriated by the prerogatives of the president of an AdSP. It shows, in short, how easy it is to commission the commissioner of a port.

Bruno Bellio

On Saturday in Genoa, in the seat of the Port of the Port Authority of the West Ligurian Sea at Palazzo San Giorgio, the 33-year concession contract was signed with which the new container terminal was born in the port of port of the Ligurian capital with the fillings made in Calata Bettolo has been assigned under management to the Bettolo Consortium. The latter is participated in 35% by the Se.be.r. Srl, which is wholly owned by the Genovese Group Investment Group (GIP) which in turn is controlled by the Infravia and Infracapital funds, and 65% by Luxembourg-based Itaterminaux Sàrl (Terminal Investment Ltd. -TIL) which is headed by the Swiss ship group Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), which on Saturday in the port of Genoa also celebrated the baptism of the new ship MSC Seaview of his crucieristic company MSC Cruciere.

According to the forecasts, the new terminal will become operational in 2022 and will have an initial annual traffic capacity equal to 720mila teu. Specifying that the terminal will be equipped with cranes capable of serving container carriers with capabilities beyond 20mila teu, the partners of the Bettolo consortium have specified that the terminal will serve both MSC ships and customers of Se.be.r. Srl, the latter company that through the fully controlled company Terminal Container Port of Genoa operates the container terminal Southern European Container Hub (SECH), which is adjacent to the new terminal in Calata Bettolo.

And proposed by the SECH terminal, which celebrates 25 years of activity this year, on Saturday the agreement that establishes the extension of up to 2045 of the concession through which Se.be.r operates the terminal is also signed.

"After more than fifteen years," said Paolo Emilio Signorini, president of the Port Authority of the Port of the West, Paolo Emilio Signorini, on the occasion of the signing of the agreements, which I believe the signing of the concession with Bettolo consortium is a news waiting for all of the port of Genoa. The new terminal, to which lay out we have worked hard in the past few months, provides for up to 800,000 teu. In the next few years we will be aiming to reach 500.000-600.000 teu. It will be a terminal capable of hosting larger container ships also in connection with the work on the new dam. It will be a terminal run by associates with a tremendous amount of expertise. As is known, it is two associates of the Bettolo Consortium, the world's second-largest shipowner and American, French and English funds capable of providing all the technological expertise and the know-how necessary for the harmonization of the terminal. In addition, we have investments planned for road and rail accessibility that can not impact the exit of goods from the terminals with the urban viability. In the next two years we will work hard to start the operation swiftly. "

That the agreement that assigns the management of the new terminal to the Bettolo Consortium was signed on Saturday, in conjunction with the baptism of the MSC Seaview It was strongly desired by the president of the region of Liguria, Giovanni Toti, who on social media highlighted the historic nature of the signing " for the thirty-year concession of the container terminal of Calata Bettolo to the Bettolo consortium. "This is one of the terminals on which the port of Genoa will develop in the coming decades and, after years of waiting, we have finally reached this important goal," he said.

Last September, Toti, accompanied by regional councillor Edoardo Rixi, from the mayor of Genoa Marco Bucci, from the president of the AdSP of the Western Ligurian Sea, Paolo Emilio Signorini, from oil business entrepreneur Alessandro Garrone and by the terminalist and logistic entrepreneur Aldo Spinelli, he had flown to Geneva to meet with the founder of the MSC group, Gianluigi Aponte. Visit that Aponte had reciprocated last March by meeting in Genoa the same representatives of the institutions at the headquarters of the Liguria Region, when the start of the activity of the new terminal as early as 2019 had been floated.

Toti's extremely active role in the affair concluded with the signing of the concession with the Bettolo consortium reached its climax in recent days when the president of the region of Liguria and the mayor of Genoa in a letter sent to the partners of the Bettolo Consortium urged them to find an agreement and to sign the concession contract as soon as possible, otherwise-they have been threatening to say that the standoff is unacceptable-they would have required the Port System Authority to reconsider the agreements reached and the concessions in the process of definition.

Missive that evidently got the intended effect : that of signing the contract on Saturday, when the baptism of the cruise ship in Genoa had been scheduled. A double event of great importance to the MSC shipowners ' group, led today by the son of the founder who expressed his satisfaction with the deal for Calata Bettolo that-highlighted the Chairman and CEO of the MSC Group, Diego Aponte-" represents a moment of great importance for the ligure port system, achieved thanks to the valuable cooperation of local institutions, which have proven to be able to make system for the benefit of the regional economic fabric. "We are pleased that the agreement has been signed, we are looking forward to being able to count on a fully operational terminal," he said.

"The development of Bettolo will guarantee the cost of large container ships in the Ligurian airport, and will be complementary to our presence," said Giulio Schenone, chief executive of the Port Investment Group. in the adjacent SECH terminal. "

Regarding the extension of the concession to the SECH terminal, the President of the AdSP highlighted that " SECH is a fundamental terminalist for the port of Genoa with over 335,000 teu worked in the last year, a very much investment plan significant for more than 120 million euros for the next few years and positive spillovers for the employment already in this first stage with new hires. I believe that, along with other measures that we are taking for our port system, this milestone is confirmation that the port is healthy and that operators are good and new (we remember that SECH has had a transition). important from the family that created it to a proprietary arrangement with new funds) they choose our ports in the sign of a dynamism that it does well hope for in the future. "

On the occasion of the baptism of the new cruise ship MSC Seaview , the executive chairman of MSC Cruciere, Pierfrancesco Vago, specified that in Liguria they work for the group about 2,500 people and 25% percent of all Italian employees in the company. "It is in Genoa, where we decided to build the MSC Towers," he said. Where the Navi Agency is based. Great Fast Ships-GNV, our Food & Beverage division and, of course, MSC Cruciere. Genoa is our "home port". The port in which MSC Cruises multiple passengers to the world, where 90% percent of the cruise traffic is MSC. These activities, our investments, activate-in this city, in all of Liguria-an additional 3,500 jobs in the induced. Here we invest about 600 million euros each year, generating an overall economic fallout of one billion and a half billion euros. "