A LOGISTICS PATTERN FOR FRUIT AND VEGETABLE TRANSPORTATION FROM ISLAND REGION: THE CASE OF SICILY

The globalization of markets regards many sectors in the E.U. and among them also the fruit and vegetable in the face of growing and increasingly intense competition exerted by the products of countries with emerging economies. But, at the same time, the globalization can also lead to the opening of new potential markets for the products, when and where the transport system, more than other things, appears to be efficient and effective and makes possible to reach the target markets in the shortest time possible and at the lowest possible cost. It is therefore very useful to create a model that takes into account hepeculiarities of the different modes of transport between the different origins/destinations and that allows a comparison in real-time, in terms of cost and time (eventually by the use of different ICT systems of easy access) for the evaluation of different alternatives of travel. These technologies, by romoting the grouping of goods, allow facilitating the formation of the load and, in the same way, of sorting the incoming as well as to make more efficient the total journey by helping to speed up the operations of embarking or of disembarking in the case of transportation combined "road-sea" type ro-ro. The proposed model, establishing an effective basis of information for trucks drivers, allows the development of alternative cheaper transports, before neglected because less rapid; as in the same time it may also allow to simulate the benefits of new actions on the supply of transport system (activation of new lines, reduction the time of boarding or of ferrying, etc.).