Port News

Kattupalli International Container Terminal’s prolonged and difficult push to woo more ship calls received some support last week when Taiwanese carrier Wan Hai Lines made its maiden call at the private, minor facility on India’s east coast.

The contentious debate over whether West Coast employers and dockworkers have the legal authority to perform safety inspections and repairs on chassis at marine terminals will most likely be resolved by a court, and it will be up to the chassis-leasing companies to initiate the legal action, according to freight forwarders and customs brokers.

West Coast ports are perfectly capable of accommodating even greater cargo surges from big ships in the years ahead, but to do so they may have to turn to more exotic measures.

Verbal abuse of harbor truck drivers at marine terminals by some members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union continues to happen despite efforts by the ports and the union to end the practice.

The Georgia Ports Authority plans to invest $152 million in capital improvements at the port of Brunswick, including construction of a new roll-on, roll-off berth, during the next decade.

When the CMA CGM Marco Polo — until 2013 the world’s largest container ship with a capacity of 16,020 twenty-foot-equivalent units — arrived in Colombo in late September, it highlighted the port’s emergence as a growing transshipment hub capable of handling the increasing number of mega-ships that have become the workhorses of the Asia-Europe trade.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is “considering all options” for replacing thousands of older trucks in order to meet a fast-approaching deadline under the port’s clean-air plan, a spokesman said.

Total international containers handled by the Northwest Seaport Alliance increased 3.7 percent in September from the same month last year as the ports of Seattle and Tacoma continue to regain traffic lost earlier in the year due to port congestion and labor disruptions associated with the coastwide longshore contract negotiations.

Adani Ports hopes to replicate the success of its flagship Mundra Port, India’s biggest non-government cargo gateway, at its new container terminal project at Vizhinjam, a deep-water, green-field site that is designed to counter the growing dominance of Sri Lanka’s Colombo Port for Indian transshipment cargo.

Mexico is in the fast lane to become a major automotive manufacturing hub. And while the decision to move to Mexico may seem simple for automobile and auto part makers looking to cut costs and transit times, it doesn’t make managing supply chains any simpler.

APM Terminals is banking on a doubling of Costa Rica’s refrigerated container exports over the next 15 years and improvements in reefer technology to fuel its ambitious investment in the deep-sea Moin container terminal.

Labor issues contributed to West Coast port congestion this past year, but it is the cargo surges from big ships and the “extraordinary randomness” of container discharges and truck visits to marine terminals that will be the longer-lasting problems for ports, according to Long Beach CEO Jon Slangerup.

DP World-operated Chennai Container Terminal last week received a call from the Maersk Serangoon, reportedly the longest container ship ever to call at India’s southeastern gateway.

With a two-phase expansion of its container facilities, Mexico's top automotive gateway says it is taking aim at competitors in the U.S. such as the Port of Houston.

The Mombasa County government is trying to extract more fees from users of the Port of Mombasa at two points in the supply chain, which would further drive up shipping costs in East Africa’s largest container gateway.

The 10 ports on the JOC's list of fastest-growing leading global container ports for 2014 each achieved year-over-year throughput growth of at least 10 percent.

Shippers and ocean carriers using India’s Tuticorin Port, or V.O. Chidamabaranar, may see significant productivity improvements in the coming months, as logistics providers are introducing an automated system for the movement of containers to and from the harbor.

APM Terminals has reached an agreement to buy the remaining 39 percent of Grup Maritm TCB, finalizing the $1 billion acquisition of the Spanish port operator and consolidating its position as the world’s second-largest container terminal operator.

There was no let up for Hong Kong in the month of September as container volumes fell for the 15th consecutive month.

The Port of Baltimore handled a record 86,149 twenty-foot-equivalent units of total container volume in August, continuing a strong run that has produced the highest three-month volume of total containers, full TEUs and full import TEUs in the port’s history.

Total container volume at the Port of Los Angeles declined 5.8 percent in September compared to the same month last year, with imports down 9.4 percent and exports declining 17.5 percent. Although Los Angeles in recent months has been regaining some of the market share it lost to East Coast ports during the 2014-15 West Coast labor dispute, volumes are still down 2.9 percent year-to-date from last year.

The problem of port congestion cannot be solely attributed to mega-ships and should be addressed through better industry collaboration and fundamental change across the supply chain, according to a global consultant in the container industry.

Container traffic at Ukrainian ports is steadily declining, reversing a previous trend of 11 to 13 percent annual growth.

The Port of Los Angeles has launched a supplemental environmental impact review of the China Shipping Container Line terminal to determine if some of the ambitious pollution-reduction measures in the earlier EIR should be revisited and possibly revised given the state of technology, and the already significant achievements in reducing pollution at the largest U.S. port.

The government of India on Wednesday approved extending an earlier productivity-linked incentive scheme for port and dockworkers through the current fiscal year, which ends March 31, 2016, averting potential labor stoppages at major public ports.

Rotterdam’s container volume increased just 1 percent in the first nine months of the year due to lower Chinese exports, the deteriorating Russian economy and slowing growth in emerging economies such as Brazil.

China’s land and maritime transport initiative linking Asia with Europe and Africa, and the countries in between, promises to add up to $2.5 trillion in trade to the country over the next decade, a Kuehne + Nagle executive said Thursday.

The Port of Mobile, Alabama, is working to build a near-dock refrigerated warehouse for transloading poultry into containers for export.

Sea Pac LLC is building a 1.5 million-square-foot facility that the South Carolina Ports Authority hopes will help Charleston compete for plastic resin exports, a market that Houston now dominates.

Two financial ratings services have affirmed their debt ratings for the South Carolina Ports Authority, which is preparing to issue $290 million in revenue bonds for container terminal upgrades and other capital projects.

Antwerp’s container traffic grew 8 percent in the first nine months of the year as the Belgian port boosted traffic on the troubled Asia-Europe route.

U.S. East Coast ports will increase their share of containerized trade from 35 percent to roughly half by 2020, putting them on parity with the West Coast, according to Rafi Danieli, CEO and president of Zim Integrated Shipping Services.

The first cold-treated citrus imports from Latin America have arrived at the port of Savannah under a U.S. pilot program that aims to cut logistics costs for produce shippers and stands to boost Savannah’s already growing refrigerated cargo business.

The Port of Long Beach has exceeded the 2014 pollution-reduction goals contained in the San Pedro Bay Ports Clean Air Action Plan, and is moving forward with a program to further reduce harmful diesel emissions.

After months of delay, the Port of New York and New Jersey is moving to break a truck-replacement deadlock that motor carriers say threatens their continued ability to serve the U.S. East Coast’s busiest port.

California Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday signed a bill that will enhance the ability of ports to secure additional bond revenue for infrastructure and environmental projects. This will make it easier for Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland, three of the six largest U.S. container ports, to be more competitive through freight infrastructure development.

The Russian government will begin work on a new deep-sea port in the enclave of Kaliningrad, between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea, by the end of the year.

Privately-operated Mundra Port recorded double-digit container throughput growth in the first fiscal half, driven in part by diversions from Jawaharlal Nehru Port disruptions and congestion that dragged down volumes at India’s largest public container handler during the same period.

Long Beach had one its best Septembers ever, continuing a recent trend in which West Coast ports are regaining some of the market share they lost this past year due to congestion and work slowdowns that accompanied the coastwide dockworker negotiations.