North American ports

Container traffic at the Port of Charleston was up a modest 3.8 percent last month, a fraction of the double-digit jump it saw in February, but still better than the 2 percent slip the port reported in January.

Hot on the heels of a record-setting March for South Carolina’s inland port in Greer, the South Carolina Ports Authority announced Wednesday that it plans to pursue a second inland facility near the North Carolina border.

West Coast ports have regained the market share of U.S. containerized imports they lost last year during the longshore labor disruptions, but industry analysts say the deployment of bigger ships through the enlarged Panama Canal later this year could swing the balance back to the East Coast.

Importers and exporters using the Port of New York and New Jersey to move containers to and from destinations within 260 miles of the largest East Coast port will save $5, an effort by the New York Shipping Association to fend off competitors from its regional distribution base.

Department of Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker said she is committed to working with ports, beneficial cargo owners and transportation providers to improve the global competitiveness of U.S. ports, with the first task being to promote better sharing of transportation data.

The Northwest Seaport Alliance of Seattle and Tacoma in March registered its third consecutive month of increased containerized exports, although imports declined 36.4 percent compared to an especially busy March 2015, according to statistics published by the alliance on Monday.

In an unsurprising but welcome move for U.S. ports pursuing major harbor deepening projects, both houses of the U.S. Congress this week pushed forward legislation that would exceed White House and congressional targets for port funding.

Deutsche Bank said it has reached an agreement to sell Maher Terminals, the 454-acre port terminal in Elizabeth, New Jersey, to a global infrastructure investment company, eight years after the German bank acquired it at the height of the pre-recession container import boom for $2.3 billion in 2007.

In a port industry marked by brutal competition, it may have been necessary for the Port of Oakland to lose its second-largest tenant in order to realize its full potential.

The U.S. government should concentrate harbor deepening funds on the most important gateways instead of scattering limited resources across multiple projects, said Curtis Foltz, CEO of the Georgia Ports Authority.

Container volume at the Port of Long Beach declined 26.2 percent in March, as expected, because the traffic was measured against the busiest month of 2015. However, laden container exports were flat, which is an encouraging sign for the months ahead because it could signal a turnaround for U.S. exports after they declined for two consecutive years.

The Port of Virginia set a new record in March for the amount of rail cargo handled in a month, despite a decline in overall containerized volume in the month.

The Port of Los Angeles reported the busiest first quarter in its history, raising the possibility that containerized imports, but more so exports, could be stronger this year than economists have been projecting.

The Port of Oakland has joined its Southern California peers and other U.S. ports in refusing to offer container weighing services for shippers, making it their responsibility to find other means to ensure compliance with the SOLAS container weight verification rule that takes effect on Jul. 1, 2016.

Port Tampa Bay hopes its new post-Panamax cranes will help propel its fast-growing, but low volume container business by attracting new services and encourage the two carriers that call the Florida port to deploy larger vessels and bring more volume.

Import cargo volume at the largest U.S. container gateways has begun its seasonal rise, but is expected to be largely flat compared with last year’s record high numbers, the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates said in their monthly Port Tracker report.

The Northwest Seaport Alliance of Seattle and Tacoma on Thursday approved a berth realignment project at the Husky Terminal that will allow the facility to work two mega-ships simultaneously.

The Port of Oakland in March recorded its third-straight month of increased exports, lifting port executives’ hopes that a drop in the value of the dollar will lead to growing exports this year.

The Port of Long Beach is studying land use to plan development of the marine terminal capacity needed to handle growing cargo volumes and larger vessels while remaining committed to environmental stewardship and community partnership.

A long-delayed plan for longshore “relief gangs” to replace the Port of New York and New Jersey’s open-ended work shifts is expected to be launched in late 2016 or early 2017, New York Shipping Association President John Nardi said.

Federal investment is expected to fall nearly $130 billion short of the investment in land- and waterside infrastructure ports will make over the next five years, according to a survey of members of the top port lobby in the nation.

A 3.5-magnitude earthquake Wednesday near the Port of Hueneme, California, caused no apparent damage, and cargo handling was proceeding normally, according to spokesperson Will Berg.

The Port of Oakland is using two smartphone applications to improve trucker turn times and address the long visit times at marine terminals that are the bane of harbor trucking companies at many U.S. ports.

U.S. East and Gulf Coast ports have been winning the market share battle in overall U.S. containerized ocean trade since 2008, and in 2015 they overcame West Coast ports in containerized imports, too.

U.S. West Coast ports in February handled 33.7 percent more laden containers than they did last February, demonstrating a solid recovery from the dark period in early 2015 when labor problems created the worst port congestion in more than a decade.

When the CMA CGM Benjamin Franklin pulled out of Los Angeles in late December after an unprecedented effort by the port community to work the largest container ship ever to call at a North American port, no one was prouder than the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

Container volume at the Port of Wilmington, North Carolina, rose 7.7 percent year-over-year in February after an 8.3 percent increase in January.

United Arab Shipping Co. has appointed TRAC Intermodal as the carrier’s sole chassis provider in the United States. Stuart Sandlin, president of UASC North America, said using a single chassis provider will benefit customers and make UASC more competitive in quoting carrier haulage rates under which the ship line arranges inland transportation.

With the 2008-09 economic recession and the labor problems of 2014-15 behind them, West Coast ports see 2016 as the year they will return to their normal annual growth trend of about 5 percent.

An on-going analysis of the factors that contribute to marine terminal congestion has industry experts concluding that ports will probably have to implement at least a half-dozen measures in order to relieve what has become one of the biggest bottlenecks in goods movement.

Containerized imports in Oakland surged a remarkable 89.7 percent in February compared to February 2015. This was the second consecutive month of strong growth at the Northern California port, and it follows similar surges at other West Coast ports, which could indicate that U.S. import growth in 2016 will be greater than the approximately 5 percent predicted by economists.

The Port of Houston’s loaded container volume last month was 1 percent above February 2015, when the port was seeing a surge in volume from diversions caused by U.S. West Coast port congestion.

Container volume at the port of Savannah rose an unexpectedly strong 8.1 percent in February, but Georgia Ports Authority CEO Curtis Foltz said year-over-year comparisons will become tougher during the next three months.

Washington state legislators are once again pushing to reform the U.S. Harbor Maintenance Fee in an effort to secure more funding for the ports of Seattle and Tacoma, two gateways facing stiff competition from Western Canadian ports for U.S.-bound cargo.

The Northwest Seaport Alliance of Seattle and Tacoma turned in another strong performance in February. Laden import container traffic jumped 29 percent over February 2015, loaded export containers surged 46.6 percent and total loaded international containers rose 28.3 percent year over year.

The Port of Charleston posted a 13 percent year-over-year increase in container volume in February and celebrated the loading of the 2 millionth BMW exported through the port since the German automaker began operations in South Carolina.

A new all-water container service moving Samsung products from Mexico through the Port of Miami to the Southeast is providing some shippers a cheaper and faster option, shaving off roughly half the time and a quarter of the cost from traditional trucking cross-border options.

Container traffic at the Port of Miami jumped 20 percent in January, a surge that port officials credited to larger vessels calling at the gateway and roughly $1 billion of investment in portside infrastructure attracting new business.

When people think of Port Canaveral, they usually associate it with passenger cruises. Capt. John Murray, the Florida port’s new CEO, said it also has a "phenomenal" future in containers.

After a flat January, container volume surged by double digits at the Port of Virginia in February, partly thanks to favorable comparisons to last year.