• The Port Authority of València participated in the 10th Spanish-Moroccan Meeting held from 29 to 30 May in Tangiers with the aim of implementing joint working formulas to improve trade relations
• Collaboration in the field of digitalisation and training are key to increasing traffic between Spanish and Moroccan companies
• Among the most immediate challenges, Valenciaport is committed to overcoming the regulatory and administrative barriers that cause less fluidity in operations or greater bureaucracy

 Valenciaport wants to be an instrument of logistics collaboration in trade between Spain and Morocco and can achieve this by ‘increasing bilateral collaboration by incorporating new technologies in digitisation, training and new connections’. This is the proposal with which the Port Authority of València  has attended the X Spanish-Moroccan Meeting ‘Maritime, Transport and Logistics’ that has taken place in Tangier .

Under the slogan ‘Joining forces to respond to global challenges’, this meeting was attended by a team from the Port Authority of València formed by Cristina Rodríguez, head of Containers, and Teresa García Ibarra, head of Ro-Ro and Short Sea Shipping.

In her intervention, in a forum made up of professionals from the logistics and trade sector, Rodriguez has backed the capacities of the ports of València and Sagunto to increase traffic between Spanish and Moroccan companies.

During the meeting, in which companies from both countries have also participated, Valenciaport has proposed formulas with the aim of increasing bilateral trade through collaboration on issues of digitisation and innovation. The aim is to improve logistics and transport with new connections both LOLO (vertical crane loading) and RORO (roll-on/roll-off cargo). It also seeks to promote economic development for both regions with the creation of jobs, investment and infrastructure.

The forum also addressed the logistical challenges in terms of transport coordination, where intramodality is emerging as the key to present and future trade. In addition, regulatory and administrative barriers that cause less fluidity in operations – greater bureaucracy – and economic volatility were also discussed.

Trade relations

Five years ago, Morocco and the PAV drew up a roadmap – at the Spanish-Moroccan Business Meeting of the Maritime, Transport and Logistics Sector, held in Tangiers – which has made it possible to promote maritime traffic between the PAV and this country. Likewise, thanks to it, new possibilities of collaboration have been detected to strengthen Valenciaport’s strategy as a bridge enclave between Africa and Europe. The intense contact between Valenciaport and the Maghreb country makes Valencia a significant commercial enclave for Morocco.

In fact, Morocco is one of the top ten countries in terms of trade relations with Valenciaport, with an annual average of around two million tonnes channelled. In this sense, the port of València maintains an important network of connections with the Moroccan ports, which is reflected in the fact that it is a destination for the routes of the large ships with weekly connections. Specifically with the ports of Agadir, Casablanca, Jorf Lasfar, Mohammedia, Nador, Tangier and Tangier Med. The main goods leaving the Valencian docks for Morocco were chemical products, construction materials, foodstuffs, iron and steel products, fertilisers, paper and pulp, among others.