No, we're not talking about a banana republic here, even though Chiquita is involved, the successor to United Fruit, which has had a difference of opinion with the Civitavecchia port authority since around the end of 2018. A dispute in the port of Civitavecchia concerning the unloading of Chiquita bananas has been going on since November last year. The port authority decided that the vessels carrying the perishables had to be berth at dock 25. There was a problem, however - the quay doesn't have a refrigerated warehouse. As soon as Chiquita received this information the shipper, which operates two warehouse in Italy (in Rome and Turin), arranged for the Maersk ship not to call at Civitavecchia but to sail onwards to Livorno. We're talking about quite some throughput volume here - bananas account for around 20% of all container movements in the port, after all.
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