Marseille (AFP)

Large discounts, meeting with international shipowners: the port of Marseille-Fos, the first in France, is launching a commercial offensive on Friday to keep its customers in an ultra-competitive sector, after the "air gap" due to strikes against pension reform.

This action plan, worth more than five million euros, is co-funded by the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region and also provides emergency support to affected businesses and investment.

"We are coming out of a period of significant blockage of French ports, with a fairly considerable economic and financial impact," said AFP president of the Grand Maritime Port of Marseille Hervé Martel.

Between December 2019 and January 2020, the 13 days "dead ports" would have caused "a loss of turnover estimated at 200 million euros" for the port of Marseille-Fos and its companies, he said.

In container traffic, "the drop in activity was 25% over these two months". Shipowners diverted their ships to Barcelona (Spain), Antwerp (Belgium) or Genoa (Italy).

A total of 127 stopovers were canceled in December and January, says Martel. Among them, 17 scheduled cruise ship stops, Marseille having become one of the most important Mediterranean ports for this activity, with two million passengers in 2019.

While in May the shipowners will decide on the layout of their international freight lines, and therefore whether or not to stop in such or such port, Marseille offers "a commitment pact" to those who will remain loyal to it.

"Customers who will stay or come back to us, continuing the relationship of trust built for 10 years, will be entitled to these measures", insists Mr. Martel, who wants to "close the parenthesis of the air hole".

On the table, a 30% discount for three months on all port costs - piloting, towing, mooring and port dues - whether they transport cars, miscellaneous goods in containers or in trucks on board ferries (traffic called "ro-ro").

The managers of the port and its companies will present this plan to the major world, Asian and European shipowners.

- "Depressive syndrome" -

Another measure, agreed this time by the handling companies: the non-invoicing of the additional costs of parking the goods during the days of strike.

As part of this plan, the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region will devote two million euros to emergency aid "for businesses affected, so that there is no bankruptcy", a explained to AFP its president Renaud Muselier.

It will also release one million euros for an investment project intended to boost the competitiveness of the port, with "a device for treating wastewater around ship repair".

Place de Marseille-Fos wishes to defend its reliability and show that it did not return to the time of the great strikes by port agents who had paralyzed its activity in 2005 and 2007.

"The origin of the (recent) movement was not in Marseille, nor in the port: it was a national movement", insists Mr. Martel, who defends a "competitive" port, providing 41,500 direct and indirect jobs, and also "victim of the conflict".

"We were faced with a deep disarray of the port place which found itself with very powerful competitors saying + Look, Marseille fell back into its initial faults, you will never get out of it +, and with this operation we swept away this depressive syndrome" , Renaud Muselier estimated.

The port of Marseille-Fos accommodates both oil and gas traffic intended for on-site refineries, solid bulk (coal, etc.), but also cars and various goods coming in containers.

In 2019, it handled more than 79 million tonnes of goods, far behind the 469.4 million tonnes of Rotterdam (Netherlands), the leading European port.

For the future, Marseille is banking, among other things, on growth in container traffic, which, according to Mr. Martel, doubled between 2011 and 2019. Despite the strikes, it increased by 4% in 2019. However, it remains overtaken by places in the north from Europe and other Mediterranean ports like Athens-Piraeus.

But for all ports the uncertainty is the same: the consequences of the coronavirus epidemic in China on the world economy.

© 2020 AFP