North Western European Ports illustrate clearly the interwoveness of (sea) ports with their Hinterland. More and more the efficient transport of goods from origin to destination is decisive for the (main) producing units, which organize their production in line with specific desiderata of consumers. This new integrated chain of production and distribution, in which logistics represents the optimal organisation of this chain, makes the Hinterland transport and distribution imperative, additional tor the oversea transport (Klapwijk, 1996). Ports organize this Hinterland transport and distribution actively, driven by the tough competion with other European seaports. They are involved the last time in this Hinterland, as they were always with regard to the connections oversea and intercontinentally.
At the moment the most important ports in the Hamburg - le Havre range have their own 'captive'areas (these are areas, in which the share of a particular port is clearly dominant) within the (European) Hinterland. They try to extend their share in these partly overlapping areas. to capture - so to say - the biggest share as possible. In this competition the (inter) modality of mode of transport is an important issue. This refers to investment in rapid and efficient transport by truck, railways, and inland water transport by barges, and the transfer between these modes where and when this results in the most cost efficient way in the total chain of transport and distribution. This investment in Hinterland connections is also behind the operation of double pack container-railways lines in the United States of America from the ports and city regions at the east coast to the ports and city regions at the western coast.
This results in North Western Europe gradually into an increasing and ultimately rich whole of investment in infrastructure and transport by a variety of transport firms, who operate at sea or at land. Often the main shipping lines participate in infrastructure or transport of connections over land, be it by truck by rail,or by barge. This is for instance the case with the European Rail Shutlle (a company linking the Dutch railways with the P&O, Nedlloyd, Sealand and Maersk shipping lines, and with the NDX company, in which the German and Dutch railways formed a partnership for freihgt transport in Europe. For this company formed a partnership with the shipping line Sea Land, whcih is owned by a American rail company (Baudouin, Collin, 1998). In the pronounced competion one sees also the ports in having part in the Hinterland transport. In this way Rotterdam participates in the intermodal (transfer from/to inland waterway, rail and road) but also in transport nodes in Eastern Europe and into the port of Triest,located between Italy and Joegoslavia. The same investments are characteristic recently for Antwerp and Hamburg. The competiton of ports for flow of goods oversea has gotten its extension to that of transport in the Hinterland.
A second strategy of each main port in the Hamburg - Le Havre range, to strenthen their position among each other, is to participate (financially and with regard to other reseources, as expertise) is to participate in smaller, well located ports, and to use these as sattelite ports, to lead away the over pressure of necessary infrastructure for embarking and storage. Flushing, located in the South Western part of the Netherlands, is a nice example of such a port in which both: the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp start up such a sattelite relationship.
3. PORTS AND PORT MANAGEMENT: ADAPTATION TO THE ACTUAL TRENDS IN NORTH WESTERN EUROPE
Western Europe is characterized by different types of port management. This relates to the mosaic of regimes and government of the nation states in Europe. Some nation states are quite centralized, other nation states are federal ones, again other nation states show quite autonomous cities or regions. With this Europe joins the differentiated system of port management all over the world, with very different forms of port management, even within one nation state: the United States of America, illustrated by the ports of New York/New Jersey, that of Seattle, that of Los Angeles. All these ports differ again with those in Japan (for instance that of Kobe), as well as with that of Hong Kong or that of Singapore (Stevens, 1997).
Broadly, three main systems can be distinguished in Western Europe, as these developed from the past:
a. The centralized regime of ports by the national government (mostly fromout the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure): France, Italy, and Spain(the Latin system).
b. The semi-public quite autonomous British trust regime of ports: United Kingdom (The Anglo-Saxon system);
c. The regime of municipal ports: The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and the Baltic States. This is clearly expressed in the historical network of port cities in North Western Europe, the so called Hanze cities: Amsterdam, Zwolle (The Netherlands), Antwerpen, Brugge (Belgium), Lubech, Wismar, Rostock (Germany), Gdansk, Elblag(Poland),Riga Sigulda (Baltic states), Stockholm, Kopenhagen (Scandinavic countries), Riga and Russia: St. Petersburg and Archangel (the Hanseatic system).
