At the time of writing, these talks have been denied by ECT’s director Jan Westerhoud, but nobody is convinced. WorldCargo News believes that Hutchison Port Holdings initiated “due diligence” on the Ceres Paragon terminal in March this year.

At that time, NYK would have been concerned about the break-up of The Grand Alliance (TGA) with the [then] likely sale of Hapag-Lloyd to NOL, which would have brought with it significant disruption to the Amsterdam facility.

NYK acquired the North American (Gulf and East coast range) operations of Ceres Terminals, Inc from Chris Kritikos in 2002, along with a 50% stake in the Amsterdam terminal, with the latter retaining 50% through a trust fund (CNK Trust).

ECT made a bid to buy Ceres Paragon early in 2005, but Mr Kritikos was able to block the sale. Regular calls by TGA began later that year. In the event NYK did not succeed in buying out Mr Kritikos until October 2007.

Leaks from ECT suggest that the talks with NYK involve the former Ceres operations in North America, but this would mean disentangling the Ceres Terminals/ Yusen Terminals management team. More fundamentally, Hutchison could face strong political opposition to implanting itself in the US.

Container traffic has built up rapidly in Amsterdam in the past 2-3 years, but Ceres Paragon remains under-utilised, even though the bold, indented dock has proven itself.