As issues regarding harbor protection since the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States stand out in bold relief, the necessity of strengthening security measures regarding imports and exports through marine transportation is raising its head. Particularly, all containers to be carried into the United States from 2007 will require e-Seal stickers applying RFID technology.
In conjunction with this movement, BPA (Busan Port Authority) president Choo June-suk, noted in an interview with the Korea IT Times: "Providing the RFIDbased U-Port System is completed in the near future, Busan Port will come to enhance business efficiency by providing a goods holder, a carrier and shipping line with freight's real-time location information.
The president forecasted that freight protection would be beefed up even more with the application of e-Seal, plus significant cost reduction as imports and exports logistics disposal time is shortened, such as electronic tagging of containers, customs clearance and shipment with vehicles' automatic identification.
In regard to the International Association of Ports & Harbors (IAPH) General Meeting in 2011, Choo said that positive results are expected since the BPA delegation returned to Korea after publicizing Busan Port's excellence and high efficiency in an IAPH mid-term board of directors meeting held in Mumbai, India on April 10~12 in connection with its official proposal of IAPH General Meeting Busan Inducement.
IAPH is the largest-scale international conference of harbor-associated bodies which was established in 1955 for the purpose of commerce increase through cooperation among harbors.
Thanks to wharf facility expansion and a new fleet of ships, on one hand Busan Port has posted the best performance on the basis of a month since its port opening by handling containers of 1,075,867 TEUs during one month on past March, this year.
Choo committed himself to doing his best to secure the mobilization of a larger amount of goods through Busan Port and for the improvement of productivity, adding that Busan Port expects to be able to take care of 12,800,000 TEUs, this year's goal provided the current increase in the movement of such goods through Busan Port is maintained.
Aiming to apply a 'Blue Ocean' strategy, Choo added that Busan Port would pursue qualitative growth, freeing itself from the previous focus on quantitative growth. As a background for such strategy conversion, he explains that it is a fact that it is difficult for Busan Port to catch up with Chinese harbors which are overflowing with the country's imports & exports amount alone too, with just the amount of materials.
China, dubbed "the factory of the world," is increasing its capacity to transport goods by aggressively expanding its harbors' facilities, according to Choo. As part of such strategies to apply the 'Blue Ocean' against China, Busan Port will be reborn as a harbor that creates high-value added, not just a quantitative harbor of mere freight by inducing prominent multinational enterprises in the rear logistics area amounting to 3.3 million pyeong (around 10.89 million m2) of the New Port, Choo said.
Keeping an eye on new logistics competitiveness creation through grafting of IT technology, Choo emphasizes that he believes Busan Port is equipped with excellent IT technology and infrastructure that will cope better with customers' demand for items becoming more and more complicated and elaborate, adding that the innovation and expansion of Busan Port's harbor logistics innovation deserves attention, including Fast Track's introduction and extensive international passenger terminal's remodeling.
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