This article appeared in the ‘Connecting Malta to mainland Europe’ supplement by ATTO published with The Sunday Times of Malta on April 7, 2024

Island economies depend entirely on their connectivity not only for their success but for their intrinsic survival. Without connectivity, Islands would depend exclusively on their own resources. Malta’s specific geographical realities, coupled with the fact that our nation is bereft of any natural resources or tangible assets, rather regrettably, we fall squarely within such league.

Since the early days of our nation, our predecessors have long fought, to address such disadvantage. Needless to say, we had a very simple unequivocal choice - connect to the world vs isolation and eventual collapse. Fortunately, the survival instincts of our ancestors and grandfathers enabled our nation’s prosperity and spurred today’s economic and socio—political state of affairs.

Fast forwarding to the twentieth century, in the aftermath of the two wars, the movement for self-determination of the Maltese people grew stronger and finally Malta was granted Independence and eventually declared itself a Republic. The British forces remained with us for some time but following their departure we no longer had guaranteed connectivity and realized that one collateral damage of self-determination was isolation. 

Following such important milestones, we knew that the only way forward was to embrace industrialization and a major prerequisite for this was to reconnect Malta to the world but this time round we had to work hard for it.

This preamble provides the context of our humble beginnings and lead to where we are today - a thriving nation, with consistent year on year growth rates, strong real GDP growth, economic activity revised upwards and private consumption and net exports growing strongly.

This was never possible without the heavy investment made at the initial stages of Malta’s industrialisation in the transportation of merchandise to and from our Islands.  It is very logical that the first questions raised by investors who were being attracted to set up their factories to Malta, were “how do we transport our raw materials in time to Malta and how do we export our finished products to their final destinations”.

Today, we take connectivity for granted because we were capable of creating two fundamental transport corridors – the Malta Freeport, catering for container traffic, and Valletta Grand Harbour catering for trailer services’ “just in time” concept.

M.V. Qormi. 1976 – 1980

The first two roll-on roll-off vessels deployed by the National Shipping Line ‘Sea Malta‘ were the mv Zejtun and mv Qormi in 1974 and 1976 respectively.  The mv Qormi was considered to be the precursor of today’s fast roro connections and became a fundamental link for the Maltese enterprise offering a relatively reliable and fast, by the standards of that time, roro connection between Malta and mainland Europe through the port of Reggio Calabria. The schedule’s capability was attuned to provide three crossings per week providing the necessary connection for trailers driven from Reggio Calabria to the northern part of Europe.

Many people whose roots hail from within the harbour areas, surely feel nostalgic when recalling the arrival of the first 6 Dutch TIR Trailers at Deep Water Quay at the Grand Harbour. These trailers had crossed over from mainland Europe to Malta to provide a different mode of transport.  This concept was very avantgarde for that time and as customary with the introduction of any innovative initiative, perceived as a threat by the incumbents.

Amongst the protagonists of such a prejudiced and sceptical movement were the forwarding agents better known locally as “burdnara”. Interpretating this innovative transportation concept as a threat to their accustomed modus operandi and essentially a threat to their families’ daily bread and butter, this closely knit camp had taken a negative attitude towards the trailer service. I still remember the significant commotion stirred at Grand Harbour mainly spurred by the fear of the unknown and resistance to change.  I recall that several trucks had tried to block the driving off of the trailers.

This was a direct consequence of the sector’s “ignorance” and resistance to change, which was quite understandable, given the infancy state of the Maltese economy at that time. Possibly, this was partly due to an exceptionally fast industrialization process that Malta had never experienced before. 

Nevertheless, things changed rapidly. The astute and enterprise driven “burdnara” immediately realized that this novelty could also be a golden opportunity for their businesses. Fear dissipated and eventually faded out exponentially. Instead of opposing change and fear of the unknown, they transformed such a threat into an opportunity. They adapted themselves to their new reality and embarked on a new journey that saw the transformation of their local transport service to a fully-fledged international forwarding agent.

M.V. Zejtun. 1974 - 1980

Over a period of 40 years, the private sector, mainly traditional ‘burdnara’ have engaged themselves with huge investments to transform their local transport services into professional, international trailer services.

Today, the local trailer operators developed an excellent ‘just-in-time’ trailer service of the highest standards. They can handle a diverse range of specialized cargoes with various consolidated depots across Europe directly to and from Malta offering full-load services across Europe.  Trailer operators are an essential connection in the transport chain linking the local industry with Europe and the world by offering guaranteed weekly exports and import departures catering for the needs of the industrial sector, fashion and retail, food and beverage.

Joseph Bugeja is the chairman of ATTO, the Association of Tractor and Trailer Operators. ATTO represents Maltese logistics operators who regularly connect Malta to the rest of the world through road services to and from Malta and across Europe. Its members service over 70 per cent of Malta’s importers and exporters across various industries including aviation, fashion, food, pharmaceutical and semiconductors industries.

Consolidating relationships

As part of its vision and business plan, ATTO is consolidating its sector relationship with strategic partners. 

The Association of Tractor & Trailer Operators is pleased to announce the endorsement of an Associate Partner Agreement signed with VGT – Valletta Gateway Terminals. 

Valletta Gateway Terminals is a joint venture between Portek Group of Singapore and Tumas Group of Malta. VGT was established on June 9, 2006 after it was awarded the 30 year concession agreement to operate and manage the Grand Harbour Terminals. Bring multi-purpose, the terminals can handle Roll On / Roll Off (RORO) operations, trailers, containers, conventional cargo and also vehicles. 

The three-year agreement was signed by Nicholas Tan, CEO VGT and Joseph Bugeja, Chairman ATTO. The two entities have already identified areas of common interests and embarked on a joint strategy.