Maersk to Stay in Charleston

Maersk Line reversed its December decision to quit calling at the Port of Charleston and will continue its services there beyond the conclusion of the current 2010 contract.

The Danish carrier said late Thursday that it had reached agreement with the South Carolina State Ports Authority to maintain its Charleston services after months of negotiations with representatives of the port, the state legislature and the state's congressional delegation.

The Danish carrier, the port's biggest user, said the agreement establishes a new contract through Dec. 31, 2014, and places its cost structure in Charleston on a “level playing field” with other ocean carriers using the port.

Under the agreement, Maersk will reduce its footprint in Charleston by giving up some of the dedicated space in the dedicated container yard that is operated by its sister company APM Terminals, where it will still use International Longshoremen’s Association labor.

“The union situation does not change for us. We will continue to operate under the master contract as before,” said Maersk Line spokesman Dana Magliola in an interview.

Maersk, which holds a 20 percent share of Charleston's container traffic, announced in December it would pull out of South Carolina because ILA locals refused to allow the company to operate from a "common-use" area where gates are staffed by nonunion state port employees. Maersk pulled three weekly calls out of the port last spring.

Jim Newsome, the port authority's new president and CEO, who took office on Sept. 1, last month signaled the negotiations might reach successful conclusion when he said he hoped he would be able to report an agreement when he gave his first State of the Port speech. That speech came on Thursday.

Newsome replaced former port chief Bernard F. Groseclose Jr., who resigned in January, a month after Maersk announced its original decision to quit the port.

“The agreement was a bilateral agreement between ourselves and the South Carolina State Port Authority that didn’t require any change in our relationship with the ILA,” said Gordon Dorsey, senior vice president of operations for Maersk Line in North America in an interview.

“It doesn’t change our operating model there. The agreement and the operating model allows us to be more efficient and gives us a cost structure that makes us competitive in the port,” Dorsey said. He declined to provide further details of the agreement.

Contact Peter T. Leach at pleach@joc.com.