ABSTRACT

The main ports in the Pacific have had to con­ form to containerised requirements in their links with overseas shipping, and inter-island shipping is beginning also to be drawn in this direction.

IMPACT OF PORT TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

Containerisation has already had an enormous impact on the quantity and quality of port employment throughout the world. In the UK, for example, port labour was reduced from 40,000 to 13,500 in fourteen years, and in Australia from 17,688 to 7,944 between 1970 and 1982.1

In the Pacific islands only Guam has full con­ tainer facilities with a gantry crane for ship-shore operations. Within the next ten years this is like­ ly to be provided in Noumea, Papeete, Pago Pago and possibly Suva, where at all places containers are at present handled by shipfs gear. Neither has the movement of full containers proceeded beyond the confines of the main island ports to any great ex­ tent, the practice is for containers to be unpacked and packed by port workers within these ports.