Sintraport (Associació de Transportistes Portuaris de Barcelona) and Cotraport (cooperative of autonomous transporters of the port of Barcelona) held elections on May 17 to renew their Board of Directors.
After the only candidacy that was presented in the elections withdrew, the previous board revalidated the trust of the autonomous transporters to continue one more term with Jorge Fernández as president, who defines the “generational change and the truck queues at the terminals” as the greatest challenges that the professional transport sector must face.
As the re-elected president of Sintraport and Cotraport has expressed, the land transport sector is facing a “perfect storm” that is evident in the “truck queues at the container terminals of the port of Barcelona”.
As explained by Jorge Fernández, the queues would be due to the increase in transhipments in the Catalan area, the retirement of many stevedores and the learning process of new ones, problems that would be added to “the large number of trucks that we have for the infrastructures that exist now.”
In addition, the president of Sintraport and Cotraport mentions the challenge of finding new carriers. In this sense, Jorge Fernández warns that “in five or ten years we are going to have a problem, and this is now.”
The president of the transport association and cooperative warns that “there are drivers who prefer to work outside the port, something that has never happened before, and I am talking about heavyweights in the sector.”
Likewise, Jorge Fernández suggests that “from now on, it could happen that we will not find drivers to do port transportation because they prefer to work abroad, given the current working conditions.” According to the president of Sintraport and Cotraport, currently, the average age of drivers would be around 55 years. “In the last year, it has increased two years, and in the next ten, many drivers are going to retire,” he laments.
Fernández explains that they have already made Puertos del Estado and the port of Barcelona aware of this challenge that the sector faces.
Finally, the autonomous transporters of the port of Barcelona assume that reducing the carbon footprint “is one of our priorities.” To this end, they seek to promote the installation of a photovoltaic park in the Sintraport and Cotraport truck parking, a project that would be in negotiations with the Barcelona Free Trade Zone Consortium and CIMALSA.
