The Insertion of Intermediate Hub Terminals

The main rationale of intermediate hub terminals is to improve the overall efficiency and geographical coverage of maritime shipping networks by offering a transshipment alternative for containers. The insertion of an intermediate hub within existing networks takes three major forms:

• Hub-and-spoke. The purpose of the intermediate hub is to provide an interface between short distance feeder lines and long distance deep-sea lines, linking regional and global shipping networks. It acts as a point of collection of regional traffic, which is particularly relevant in the context of a circular sea where the intermediate hub is inserted at a central location often commanding access to the whole region, such as for the Caribbean (Kingston). The ship capacity of hub-and-spoke transshipment traffic differ significantly since feeder ships tend to be of smaller capacity than those on deep sea lines.
• Relay. The intermediate hub acts as a point of interchange between several long distance shipping lines. Ship capacity between relays are relatively similar. The privileged locations tend to be bottlenecks such as Singapore, Algeciras or Tangier Med.
• Interlining. The intermediate hub becomes an interface between several pendulum routes along the same maritime range, but servicing a different array of port calls, such as Busan.

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