COMPARATIVE STUDY OF BRAZILIAN PUBLIC CONTAINER TERMINALS: TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY RANKING AND FORECASTS FOR 2052

Purpose: Due to the competitiveness required in this port sector, analyzes the efficiency of the operations become relevant. Therefore, the main goal of this paper is to assess the technical efficiency of the operations in Brazilian public container terminals, considering the current and the projected demand (based on the nominal capacity) up to 2052.Design/methodology/approach: An efficiency ranking was established applying the Grey Relational Analysis method to all the Brazilian public containers. After that, the efficiency levels were forecasted for the year 2052, considering the historical data of terminals’ activity, the amount of used resources and their nominal capacities.Findings: The findings shows that the most efficiency terminals did not reach above 80% efficiency, even considering that they are the ones that best allocate their assets based on their demand. Furthermore, the improvement of technical efficiency of terminals does not depend only on the spare capacity; it must be a combination of resources, based on the increase in demand.Research limitations/implications: In this study, the limitations are related to the selection of a linear demand growth that implies in a high margin of error to be considered until 2052, compared to what will be accomplished. Besides, the container terminals were considered isolated from others on the same port but the equipment might be shared by different terminals.Practical implications: the paper might help port managers in the planning of container terminals’ for the next years, calling attention for the need of find balance between capacity and efficiency use of resources.Originality/value: the originality is related to the fact that we analyzed the composition of equipment (besides of the spare capacity) and the forecast of the technical efficiency helping in the planning of this sector. Besides, the application considered the Brazilian container terminals’.