A Berth Allocation Policy by Considering Collaboration between Adjacent Container Terminals

The volume of international maritime trade has increased significantly in recent years, and the growth is expected to be continued with similar rates.  To meet the growing demand, it is necessary to improve productivity with minimal investment in container terminals infrastructures. Iranian Rajaee port is the main gateway of Iran import and export and is chosen as the case study of this research. Rajaee port has two container terminals with different depths. Currently, these two container terminals are working separately by two different operators. To meet the growing demand for maritime trade, these two container terminals could share their resources based on a policy presented in this study. This research has developed a berth allocation policy where demand could be driven from a container terminal to an adjacent container terminal with an additional cost. The goal of the Original Container Terminal is to minimize the total cost of vessel services. Several numerical examples are presented to evaluate the effectiveness of the new berth allocation policy. The results show that the proposed berth allocation policy offers significant cost savings over high demand periods.