Benchmarking deep-sea port performance in the Hamburg-Le Havre range

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on answering the following research question: “How efficient are deep-sea ports in the Hamburg-Le Havre (HLH) range compared with each other?” Design/methodology/approach – Input-oriented (and output-oriented) Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) results demonstrate that the deep-sea port of Vlissingen is perfectly efficient and also that the port of Amsterdam is quite efficient. These DEA results are underligned by the single-point benchmarking results. Findings – The Dutch deep-sea ports are the most efficient ports in the HLH range. Finally, relatively smaller deep-sea ports (with a market share of about 5 percent, such as Amsterdam, Vlissingen, and Zeebrugge) are relatively more efficient than larger deep-sea container ports (such as Antwerp, Hamburg, and Rotterdam). It can be observed that especially in these larger ports, the container sector is (very) important as compared with the smaller ports. Furthermore, Dutch ports are relatively more efficient and receive the lowest subsidies, suggesting efficiency improvement opportunities for the Belgium, German, and French ports. Originality/value – The originality of the paper is in its focus on all deep-sea ports in the HLH range (and not on container ports only) and in the combination of methods (DEA and single-point benchmarking).