Panama – cargo center of the Americas

Maritime Week Americas 2012 promises to attract the cream of the ports, shipping and bunkering industries from throughout the Americas. Hosted by Panama, it will cover in depth many of the key maritime issues of today.

Panama is the maritime and logistics hub of the Americas and this is the ideal time for maritime executives to hear about the latest developments on the Panama Canal expansion, as well as the wide array of maritime-related projects in the region.

The week-long series of maritime events, MWA 2012: Embracing Change – Harnessing Opportunities, will feature two parallel highly-focused conferences. Delegates will meet for the grand opening on Tuesday, May 22, ahead of the official exhibition launch, and they will then focus on their chosen conference: MWA Bunkers or MWA Ports – Intermodal.

The bunker conference, Shifting Market Dynamics, will start by focusing on the big picture, covering the issues that are forcing the hands of governments and international commerce and impacting world markets. Against this backdrop it will assess the growing importance of Panama and the increasingly vital part it is likely to play in global trade.

Panama will again come under the microscope as delegates look at how the changes taking place in the country – from the expanded canal to increased storage capacity and how the arrival of new bunkering infrastructure are transforming it into one of the powerhouses of the Americas.

New for 2012 is a major conference on ports, entitled MWA Ports – Intermodal: Countdown to 2014 – An Evaluation, which covers port logistics, investment and developments. It brings together the port developers and terminal operators with the shipping companies, as well as the dredging, logistics, security and related companies that are essential to the operation of a viable, successful port.

The conference will look at the dynamics of the US terminal container market in a post Panamax world and the potential impact of the expansion of the Panama Canal on port-intermodal capacity.

One key session will look at the latest trends and challenges currently facing some of the ports in the region, by analysing the competitive regional supply and demand landscape of container trade and evaluating long term port investments, expansion, upgrading priorities and strategies.