Port News

Berth productivity on ships of 10,000 TEUs and higher edged upward globally in the first half of 2014 versus the same period last year, but saw wide variation depending on the region, according to JOC Port Productivity data.

The state of Texas will help fund the effort to continue replacing old drayage trucks at the Port of Houston with cleaner, more environmentally friendly models through a $3 million grant.

Mike Zampa, a communications specialist for the past 25 years, including eight years in the maritime industry, was named director of communications at the Port of Oakland.

As congestion mounts in Southern California, the Port of Long Beach is taking immediate actions to target hot spots in the harbor area and to share information on chassis availability with all port stakeholders.

Based on vessel arrival delays at the two ports in the last 12 months, Shenzhen performed better than Hong Kong with shorter average delays across all vessel sizes, said CargoSmart, a logistics software firm.

The ports of Seattle and Tacoma are taking a bold step to improve the competitiveness of the Pacific Northwest gateway by unifying the planning, marketing and management of their marine cargo terminals and related functions under a single body.

While it’s still too early to predict how the Panama Canal expansion will impact trade flows, competition among U.S. ports for discretionary cargoes will hinge to an increasing degree on intermodal connectivity.

New York congressman plugs development of 350-acre container terminal in Brooklyn, saying it would serve sizable market, require less dredging and would be free of bridge impediments.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey expects within the next couple of weeks to announce details of its “winter plan” to avoid a repeat of the gridlock that crippled the East Coast’s largest port last January and February.

The Chinese government unveiled a six-year plan to develop the nation’s infrastructure and capacity, including a strategy to double the size of the port of Tianjin, in order to boost import and export flows and modernize its domestic supply chain.

International Container Terminal Services will spend $330 million to expand its terminal in Manila and inland container depot over the next 10 years, in an effort to alleviate long-term congestion issues at the port.

In a recently issued paper, former Maersk executives Andy Lane and Charles Moret, now partners at Container Transport International Consultancy, say growing pressure from larger ships can be managed through improved collaboration among carriers and terminals.

In cooperation with the Chinese government, Russian port logistics company Summa Group plans to complete a $100 million expansion of the Russian port of Zarubino in 2018, offering shippers better access to and from Northeast Asia.

The Port of Charleston took a step closer to dredging its 45-foot-deep ship channel to as much as 52 feet after gaining the Army Corps of Engineers’ tentative approval of the project’s draft environmental impact statement.

Bigger ships, and more of them, will be soon be able to call at the port of Tianjin after the Chinese government approved a plan to open up a larger portion of the port's waters to foreign cargo ships and add beths.

Congestion at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach grew worse over the weekend, with no relief in sight as peak-season container volumes descend on the largest U.S. port complex.

Potential Russian transit blocks and additional European Union sanctions could hurt both ports and railways in Latvia, and cripple the country's economy, Latvia's economy minister said.

Hapag-Lloyd has suspended its Rotterdam congestion surcharge in the latest sign that traffic is flowing more freely at Europe’s largest container hub following a summer marred by lengthening delays in cargo handling.

The Shenzhen government could pay nearly all of the extra costs associated with switching to low-sulfur fuel while at berth in the city’s port as a result of a new government-sanctioned program.

New calls from container carriers and volumes from the tail end of the 2014 peak season increased Boston’s September throughput by nearly 12 percent.

After months of saying the concession bandwagon must go on, Brazil’s port minister Cesar Borges has this week stated publicly that the South American country may have to revise its model for serving up port concessions and devise a “Plan B”.

“If it bleeds, it leads,” is a saying in the news industry that means bad news gets higher ratings than good news, and that rang true on JOC.com this past week.

A New York-based third-party logistics company is opening a Florida office, the third major expansion for the firm in two years.

Longshoremen in Los Angeles and Long Beach worked 20 percent more hours to handle a 1 percent year-over-year increase in container volume in August, illustrating the impact of port congestion on productivity.

The Port of Veracruz plans to quadruple its total capacity through a $1.8 billion expansion plan.

UPS added 766 U.S. postal codes to its UPS Worldwide Express Plus network in the third quarter, extending the reach of its international earliest morning service deeper into the U.S.

Trucking employment bounced back after the dog days of August, climbing 2.3 percent year-over-year in September as the U.S. labor market showed surprising strength.

Cargo traffic on the St. Lawrence Seaway rose 5 percent year-over-year between late March and late September, largely thanks to strong grain and steel shipments.

The Alabama State Port Authority plans to develop a 300-acre automobile terminal at Mobile to handle import and export vehicles.

The city’s logistics industry does not belong under the inward looking Transport and Housing Bureau and the portfolio should be reassigned to a separate administrative structure, the British Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong said in a position paper.

As U.S. ports ponder the inevitability of automating their terminal operations, they must answer two key questions -- how soon, and how much to invest?

New regulations on trucking capacity at Vietnamese ports are exacerbating congestion at the overloaded Cat Lai terminal in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

With the navigation channel of the Brazilian port of Santos closed for 12 hours today, it’s possible that South America’s largest port will finally have a tunnel linking its eastern and western banks after more than 80 years of waiting.

Extortion of truck drivers played a role in congestion at the Port of Manila, a top Philippine official said yesterday.

Germany’s Federal Court again delayed a final ruling on plans to deepen the navigation channels in the river Elbe to allow the port of Hamburg to handle the latest generation of mega-container ships.

Florida’s fastest-growing port saw double-digit volume gains in August, led by a nearly 30 percent increase in exports.

Low ocean carrier rates are to blame for much of the congestion afflicting U.S. container ports, several ocean carriers and terminal operators said at a Federal MaritimeCommission hearing this week.

Federal Maritime Commissioners say they're keeping an open mind on how the FMC should respond to U.S. port congestion issues that the commission is highlighting in a series of regional public hearings.