As the global maritime industry gathers in London this week for the IAPH World Ports Conference 2026, one session deserves particular attention. Igor van den Essen, Chief Executive of Africa & Europe at APM Terminals, will join a panel examining how ports, governments, logistics providers and development institutions can align infrastructure, connectivity and investment to strengthen regional maritime trade. The framing is deliberate. In an era of geopolitical fragmentation, supply-chain volatility and competing industrial policies, the most consequential work in ports is no longer purely operational. It is relational.
Ports have always been nodes. What has changed is the recognition that isolated excellence is no longer sufficient. A highly efficient terminal surrounded by weak hinterland connections, fragmented regulation or under-capitalised logistics partners becomes a bottleneck rather than a catalyst. Conversely, coordinated investment across the waterfront, the rail and road corridors, and the institutional frameworks that govern them can multiply the economic returns of every dollar spent on quay walls and cranes.
Why Partnerships, Not Just Projects
The traditional model of port development treated the terminal as a discrete asset. Concession agreements focused on throughput guarantees, royalty rates and minimum investment thresholds. That approach delivered capacity, but it often left the broader ecosystem lagging. Congestion shifted from the berth to the gate. Truck queues lengthened. Inland depots remained under-equipped. Regional trade corridors failed to cohere.
Public-private partnerships, when properly structured, address this systemic gap. APM Terminals’ own experience across Africa and Europe illustrates the point. In Nigeria, long-term engagement with authorities has moved beyond Apapa modernisation toward discussions of greenfield capacity at Badagry and sustained investment in Onne. The company has publicly linked further capital commitments—measured in hundreds of millions of dollars—to policy stability, single-window trade facilitation and coordinated corridor development. Similar patterns appear in Liberia, where workforce localisation and master-planning with the National Port Authority have been treated as co-equal priorities with physical upgrades.
These are not acts of corporate altruism. They reflect a hard commercial reality: terminal operators capture value only when the entire chain functions. Reliable vessel schedules, predictable cargo dwell times and competitive total logistics costs depend on alignment between the public sector’s role as regulator and planner and the private sector’s capacity to mobilise capital and operational expertise.
The Regional Dimension
Regional maritime trade is particularly sensitive to this alignment. Intra-African trade remains a fraction of what geography and population would suggest it could be. Fragmented standards, inefficient border processes and underdeveloped secondary ports keep costs high and volumes low. The same logic applies within Europe’s more mature networks: the value of a hub such as Algeciras or Maasvlakte II is magnified when feeder and hinterland connections are seamless.
Development institutions—multilateral banks, climate funds and regional bodies—enter the equation as both capital providers and standard-setters. Their involvement can de-risk projects that pure commercial capital might avoid, particularly those with strong sustainability or connectivity externalities. Yet their effectiveness depends on ports and governments presenting coherent, bankable propositions rather than isolated wish-lists. The panel discussion in London is therefore less about celebrating existing collaborations than about diagnosing why many remain underpowered.
Risks and Realism
Partnerships are not a panacea. They can entrench incumbents, obscure accountability or prioritise prestige projects over incremental improvements that matter more to shippers. Concession renegotiations sometimes become political footballs. Local content requirements, if poorly designed, can raise costs without building genuine capability. And the language of “alignment” can become a substitute for hard choices about tariffs, labour flexibility and environmental standards.
Successful models tend to share certain characteristics: clear allocation of risk, transparent performance metrics, long-term horizons that outlast political cycles, and genuine two-way accountability. The operator must deliver efficiency and investment; the public authority must deliver predictable regulation, supporting infrastructure and a level playing field. Where these conditions hold, the results are measurable in rising throughput, falling unit costs and expanding regional trade.
A Moment of Choice
The IAPH conference theme—”Port leadership for a brave new world”—captures the stakes. Geopolitical realignment is re-routing cargo. Decarbonisation is rewriting the capital intensity of both vessels and terminals. Digitalisation is raising the bar for data sharing and cyber resilience. In this environment, the ports that thrive will be those that treat partnership not as a public-relations exercise but as a core operating discipline.
Van den Essen’s presence on the panel is significant precisely because APM Terminals sits at the intersection of global network design and regional execution. The company’s dual role as a major terminal operator and a key node in the Maersk system gives it both the incentive and the leverage to push for systemic improvements. Whether other operators, governments and financiers meet that ambition will determine how much of the latent potential in regional maritime trade is actually realised.
Stronger ports are not built in isolation. They are powered together—or they underperform together. London offers an opportunity to move from rhetoric to the harder work of institutional design. The industry should take it.