Port News

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang this week visited Brazil and other South American countries and offered to spend billions of dollars on major infrastructure projects, including in the ports and railroad sectors.

Now that the West Coast’s labor problems are behind them, longshoremen and employers must focus on the real chokepoint in marine terminal operations — the container yard, the president of the largest International Longshore and Warehouse Union local said Thursday.

The Port of Savannah is ramping up its refrigerated cargo capacity after substantial year-over-year growth in reefer cargo at the Georgia port.

The Port of Houston’s loaded container volumes jumped 46 percent in April, boosted by cargo diversions from the U.S. West Coast that appear to have had more staying power than some originally anticipated.

Demurrage and per-diem detention fees at gridlocked U.S. ports have turned into a multimillion-dollar hot potato. Cargo interests, truckers, ocean carriers and marine terminals are locked in noisy, seemingly nonstop argument over responsibility for the fees. It’s a complex problem with no easy solution — but plenty of finger-pointing.

China’s top 20 coastal ports in April began to claw back some of the container volumes lost during the dismal foreign trade recorded in March, even though exports continued to fall in year-over-year comparisons.

U.S. West Coast waterfront employers overwhelmingly voted to ratify a five-year contract with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, bringing both sides one step closer to healing the wounds inflicted on shippers during months of congestion.

With no clear path to prevent a recurrence of the crippling, nearly yearlong disruption visited upon West Coast ports and, as of this writing, no final ratification of a new contract by West Coast dockworkers, shippers are exercising their right of free choice and walking away.

The Suez Canal is scheduled to be wider and deeper by the end of the summer, but the potential savings of time and money for shippers and carriers is not a concern for Panama Canal Authority CEO Jorge Quijano said Wednesday.

Marine terminal operators, warehouses and truck facilities in California could be called upon to manage harmful emissions under the California Air Resources Board’s proposed Sustainable Freight Plan, according to a shipping industry representative.

In an attempt to ensure sufficient availability of chassis during the summer-fall peak-shipping season, the Port of Long Beach Thursday will meet with potential bidders interested in managing a peak chassis fleet.

A former U.S. Labor Department chief economist is advocating placing unionized port labor under the Railway Labor Act to prevent showdowns with management such as the recent one that nearly crippled West Coast ports.

Container traffic in Seattle-Tacoma returned to normal in April as the vessel and container backlogs that had developed over four months of labor slowdowns dissipated.

The new discount, effective on June 1, comes on top of the existing Environmental Ship Index, which means that ships can benefit from a 30 percent reduction in port dues for every call, the port authority said.

Measures to improve productivity at the port of Manila continued with the recent ground breaking of a dry port south of the capital that aims at increasing the capacity of the port’s flagship terminal by 10 percent.

With diversions continuing in the aftermath of the West Coast labor negotiations, the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach turned in a mediocre performance in April, with total container volume edging up 1 percent from April 2014. This compares against much faster growth at East and Gulf coast ports in April and year to date.

The delivering system for moving containers from mega-ships operated by carrier alliances to cargo interests and truckers is antiquated and must change immediately if ports are to conquer their congestion problems, according to John McLaurin, president of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association.

The Port of Hamburg can no longer claim to be Europe’s second-largest container port.

Fruit exports from Chile and Peru are off to a promising start in 2015 thanks in large part to better weather and increasing demand from key overseas markets.

The Port of Savannah posted record container volumes in April, a potential sign that shippers who were once looking for a temporary haven from U.S. West Coast port disruption may have found a more permanent home on the East Coast.

The degree to which the Panama Canal expansion will alter the global cold chain is yet to be determined, but stakeholders are already seeing signs of a rise in business.

France’s River Seine port of Rouen has for a long time made a speciality of the north-south regular container trades, particularly those between northern Europe and west Africa. But the port no longer sees a future for itself as a major container port, not even as one specializing in the north Europe-Africa trades.

Container throughput at Hong Kong in April tumbled 11.7 percent year-over-year, the second month of double-digit declines, data from the government’s Port Development Council showed.

As truck driver pay moves up by double-digits, trucking operators need to look beyond a decades-old business model for new ways to attract, keep and satisfy drivers. Treating them better is step one, a trucking veteran says. Guaranteed salaries may be another.

The government of Cyprus believes that the island’s position in the Mediterranean makes it a natural choice as an international port and logistics hub.

Shippers are getting used to longer ocean transit times to the point that only 20 percent of U.S. inbound container freight really needs to be offloaded at the nearest possible port, a leading U.S. port director said.

Evergreen Line and King Ocean Services will begin calling Haiti’s new Port Lafito in the coming months, according to port developers GB Group.

East Coast and West Coast ports snatched a sizable share of the U.S.containerized import market from their West Coast counterparts in the first fourth months of the year, as shippers shifted cargo away from the congested gateways.

The leader of the management group that negotiates with West Coast longshoremen said this week that the negotiating process that yielded months of disruption through February is “not sustainable.”

The long-stalled privatization of the port of Piraeus is finally underway with three foreign companies bidding for control of the leading Mediterranean transhipment hubs.

West Coast ports say they’ll have productivity back to normal by the end of May after more than four months of congestion, but, in the meantime, some shippers continue to struggle with delays and lost business.

The Port of Virginia is falling short. Record volumes and a return to profit in the past year have been matched with near-unprecedented congestion and user dissatisfaction, Port Director and CEO John Reinhart said Thursday.

While besuited port industry executives milled about hotel ballrooms at the Virginia International Trade Symposium Thursday, truck-driving men and women in shirtsleeves marched in protest on the streets outside.

Southern California truckers who said they were improperly charged late fees for containers they couldn’t return on time to gridlocked ports received mixed decisions in the first arbitrators’ rulings on their cases.

A decision by International Container Terminal Services, Inc. (ICTSI) to implement a container booking system to better manage truck movements at its flagship Manila terminal will be welcomed by the port that bore the brunt of choking congestion last year.

Convinced that Oakland will return to normal operations by the end of May, port executives are looking ahead to the beginning of peak-shipping season this summer, and they will soon roll out a series of operational improvements to prepare for the next surge in cargo.

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach continue to dig out of the vessel backlog that has plagued the largest U.S. port complex since last fall. For the third consecutive day, the Marine Exchange of Southern California reported that no container ships were at anchor.

APT Terminals and a dockworkers union offer disputing views on the impact of a labor dispute at Peru's Port of Callao, a major maritime gateway on the West Coast of South America.

Legislation pushed by the third-ranking Senate Republican aims to keep Congress more in the loop on port congestion flare-ups and gauge how labor negotiations impact port performance.