Saigon Newport: On the Road to Integration

 

The foremost advantage and strong point of our company is the ability to meet short-term and long-term demand, with a tradition of uninterrupted development. All working units of the company are situated in favourable locations for customers. With the visionary leadership since 1989, the company has built many port facilities, in addition to the unique Newport in Ho Chi Minh City:

o  Cat Lai Terminal, with wharfs measuring 973 m and an area of 72ha, is the largest single port in Ho Chi Minh City. It matches the seaport development programme until 2020 approved by Prime Minister. The handling capacity is estimated to reach 2.5 million TEUs a year by 2020.

 

o  Tan Cang - Song Than ICD, covering over 50 ha, is located at the centre of Song Than Industrial Park II and near more than 10 industrial and export processing zones in Ho Chi Minh City, Binh Duong Province and Dong Nai Province.

 

o  Tan Cang - Nhon Trach Terminal is situated in Nhon Trach District, Dong Nai Province. The terminal lies in the middle of seven industrial zones in Nhon Trach District and near six industrial zones in Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province. The direct service route from here to Cat Lai Port is half the cost of overland transportation.

 

o  Especially, Saigon Newport Company is one of the first to develop deepwater seaports in Cai Mep area, Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province. Currently, we are building a terminal, planned for partial operation by late 2008, with 300 m of piers and 20 ha of warehouses.

 

o  In addition, we are beginning development of the 200-ha Long Binh ICD in Dong Nai Province, and the construction and operation of new ports in the central and northern regions.

 

Another outstanding strong point of Saigon Newport is the sound business orientation. Since our foundation, we determined our objectives of developing and operating container terminals. Currently, Cat Lai Terminal is the only one in Vietnam capable of accommodating 5-6 ships with loads of 30,000 tonnes each at the same time, and is equipped with the most modern container handling facilities in Ho Chi Minh City and all of Vietnam.

Presently, we have 13 gantry cranes out of 19 such cranes in Ho Chi Minh City, and many other handling facilities capable of serving 1.5 million TEUs a year, accounting for over 62 per cent of container handling volume in Ho Chi Minh City, and over 40 per cent in Vietnam. All operations are monitored by international standard container port management software.

 

Human resource development is always a top concern for Saigon Newport Company’s Management Board. We inherited a tradition of military discipline, and high determination in carrying out our tasks. Now that Vietnam has joined the WTO, our staff must be well equipped with professional knowledge to fully understand new trends. Therefore, in addition to talent attraction policies, Saigon Newport highly emphasizes training activities. We cooperate with the Southeast Asian Seaport Association and shipping companies to send our staff to visit and study overseas ports.

The transformation into a holding company was a turning point in bringing Saigon Newport to a new high, diversifying ownership forms and expanding professional areas. This was a basic change in the company leadership’s business philosophy, which has proven to create momentum for sustainable development. Our Forwarding, Logistics and Stevedoring Company has only recently been set up, but expects to reach ROE ratio of at least 18 per cent in 2007. In a near future, we will set up many subsidiary companies like joint venture companies, joint stock companies and expand our business scope into construction, real estate, shipping, maritime promotion, and office services.

 

Logistics services in Vietnam are not new, but have never reached a professional and efficient level, as we lack human resources with basic logistics training. In my opinion, to resolve this weakness, we should cooperate and coordinate with domestic and international associations and organisations to open medium and long-term logistics training courses. Another important aspect is the professionalism of logistics provider chains. It requires great effort from different divisions, like shipping, forwarding and logistics, to have a comprehensively effective logistics operation.

 

Logistics service combines high-level shipping and warehousing services, using information technology to coordinate cargo transport from production to consumption, through the shipping, warehousing and distributing stages. The objective of logistics is to supply a cost-effective service. So we can see the importance of the seaport system in the logistics services development. However, the orientation and development of the seaport system must be in line with the development of a larger synchronous system, from inland waterways and overland shipping facilities, to forwarding. Therefore, seaports should take full advantage of cooperation, to create a cost-effective logistics service for clients. 

 

Seaports play important roles in international trade and investment, and the seaborne economic sector has to date contributed some 30 per cent to Vietnam’s GDP. However, the seaborne economy, primarily the seaports, currently fails to satisfy the development requirements of the national economy. So far, shipments between Vietnam and both Europe and America must be shipped through another Southeast Asian region seaport, because our ports cannot support big ships.

 

Vietnam has entered the WTO and the Government and concerned branches are paying due attention developing and modernising the seaport system, especially deepwater seaports which will receive heavy-load ships. This will help Vietnamese goods to be sent to destination ports without visiting third-party ports, allowing enterprises shorter shipping and forwarding times, and minimising business costs, opening Vietnamese doors to world trade and investment.