Sea-port industry in Northern Vietnam has witnessed an impressive development in recent years. From 2005 to 2016, both the number of berth and total berth length has doubled the figure and area of container yard in the whole region has increased more than three times. However, rising number of player and slowing down of throughput growing rates harden the competitiveness in the area. Through the period from 2000 to 2012, the supply was always higher than the demand and the gap was even greater since 2012. After 2017, the competition in the area will be forecasted to be tougher when the Lach Huyen International Container Terminal begins its operation.
The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the competition among container terminals in Northern Vietnam, including the 12 in Haiphong city and the 2 others in Quang Ninh province. Different quantitative methodologies and number of previous studies in the given topic will be applied to reveal the current condition. Game theory is then applied to define the equilibrium handling charges and profit in the case of non-cooperative game and 3 cases of cooperative game. In order to define the input parameters required by the game models, queuing theory and uncertainty theory are deployed to examine the relationship between terminals' rate of throughput/capacity and arrival vessels' waiting cost.
Systems of non-linear functions are then solved by the application of Matlab. The calculation results imply that the current handling charges offered by container terminals in Northern Vietnam are much lower than the equilibrium prices. This situation benefits only foreign shipping lines while local terminals are losing profit for reinvestment. The calculation results also show that in case of cooperation, profit of all the container terminals increase compared with when there is not any kind of coalition. Suggestions on the handling charges and the cooperation among terminals are then accordingly contributed in order to improve the competitiveness of given container terminals.