Globalization is not going to end no matter how much it has shown its weaknesses, and European companies will continue to produce or acquire their components in the most competitive markets. With this premise, and bearing in mind that the crisis in the supply chains will entail significant readjustments, representatives of the port of Barcelona have moved in search of those markets that are gaining ground on China and that are in an important phase of logistics growth .
Thailand stands out as one of the focuses on which the exports of developing Southeast Asian countries gravitate, such as Burma, Laos, Cambodia and Malaysia, in addition to offering security and maintaining trade agreements with Hong Kong, China, South Korea , Singapore, Australia and Japan. Hence, it has been the destination of the special mission that the port of Barcelona has carried out these days to the region, where its representatives have also met with the shipping companies ONE, Maersk and Evergreen, which after the pandemic have reinforced the role of Barcelona as a hub between Asia, Europe and North Africa.
The Thai port of Laem Chabang also aspires to be one of the new allies of Barcelona. Currently positioned as the twentieth in the world in container traffic, with 8.3 million units moved in 2021 and a forecast of 8.7 million for this year. Although the Port Authority of Thailand is developing the third phase of expansion to increase the capacity of the port to 18 million containers per year and, above all, to increase the logistics capacity of the railway, increasing by 30% the transfer of cargo from the truck on the train, thus expanding its attraction capacity. Some actions that should be operational already in 2025.
That same capacity to supply important industrial clusters and to be able to quickly supply a market of 400 million consumers is one of Barcelona's strengths that the Thai counterpart has valued. "We can say that this mission has not only gone well, but that we have achieved our objectives due to the interest shown by our Thai partners, who value the visit to the southern European logistics hub", said the president of the port of Barcelona, Damià Calvet .
In their next business mission, in 2023, representatives of the Catalan infrastructure will visit Bombay to focus on the Indian market.
