Port News

Greek longshoremen have joined a 24-hour nationwide strike today called by labor unions to protest austerity measures imposed by international lenders on the crisis-mired country.

Terminal operating giant PSA has further increased its investment in Chinese ports with its first major deal in the Yangtze River Delta.

Edward Wytkind, president of the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department, urged the governors of New York and New Jersey to force a bistate crime watchdog agency to approve a longshore hiring plan in the Port of New York and New Jersey.

Officials from the Tampa Port Authority and terminal operator Ports America, as well as regional exporters and importers, celebrated the 10-year anniversary of Zim Integrated Shipping Services’ calls at the Port of Tampa.

The Port of Oakland at the weekend broke ground on its Trade and Logistics Center, an import, export and transshipment hub with intermodal rail service that will bring logistics activities on to port property.

Bangladesh exporters are unable to get their goods out of the country via the Port of Chittagong, the country’s busiest port, after trucking companies refused to deliver goods because of vandalism fears, according to reports.

Sometime this year or early next, Florida will replace New York to become the third-largest U.S. state in population.

London Gateway, the first major new port to be built in the U.K. for several decades, will open for business on the north bank of the River Thames on Wednesday, Nov. 6.

The South Carolina Ports Authority will launch a clean truck certification program on Jan. 1, 2014, to reduce port-related air emissions at SCPA’s container terminals.

France’s Port of Le Havre has welcomed the maiden call of the Glovis Condor, a roll-on, roll-off vessel owned by Glovis, a South Korean company.

Don’t count on exports to the Caribbean and Central America as a panacea for what ails the sputtering trade with the rest of the recovering world economy this year. What were fast-growing trade lanes are taking a breather. Many tourists are opting to skip their tropical vacations, so those islands are not importing retail goods in anything like the quantity they need when snowbirds come flocking.

The Harbor Trucking Association of Southern California in early December will launch on its Web site a monthly tracking system that will provide data on turn times at all of the container terminals in Los Angeles-Long Beach.

Rotterdam’s container traffic declined 1 percent year-over-year in the first nine months of 2013 as the impact of a sluggish European economy was compounded by the loss of traffic to its German rivals.

The neighboring ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles have dominated the trade between Asia and the U.S. for so long that the Southern California transportation community has come to believe it is its birthright.

The Port of Long Beach will find out soon enough if its search for a new executive director will attract potential candidates worthy of what should be one of the most prestigious jobs in the industry or if the port’s toxic political environment will discourage top talent from even applying.

The Port of Long Beach will work with industry stakeholders, including shipping lines, terminal operators and cargo interests, as it spends $4.5 billion to build the most productive port in the nation, Harbor Commission President Thomas Fields said on Oct. 30.

Although it was a single incident involving one motor carrier in Southern California, the purchase of a truck off a lease by a father-son driving team confirms that the owner-operator model at U.S. container ports is viable, the harbor trucking industry believes.

The Panama Canal expansion’s completion date has been delayed from April 2015 to June 2015 in the Pacific locks, according the Panama Canal Authority.

DP World handled 14.2 million 20-foot-equivalent units in the third quarter, a 2.4 percent year-over-year increase that was driven by an improved performance at...

The Port of Cleveland is in final negotiations with the Dutch company Spliethoff Group to run a global container service between the Great Lakes and Europe via the Saint Lawrence Seaway.

Representatives of waterfront employers, drayage companies and the International Longshoremen’s Association said there’s an urgent need to improve the way intermodal chassis are supplied in the Port of New York and New Jersey.

International Longshoremen’s Association officials and port employers told an industry forum that a standoff with the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor over longshore hiring threatens to undermine productivity gains in a new ILA contract.

ASF Intermodal has opened an intermodal drayage facility in the Chicago area.

The executive director of the Port of Oakland issued an invitation, and a warning, to dissident harbor truckers to join other stakeholders in working toward a solution to labor issues and congestion problems that have plagued the Northern California gateway for four months.

International Longshoremen’s Association President Harold Daggett said ILA members in the Port of New York and New Jersey are “fed up” with hiring delays he blames on the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor.

Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone, India’s largest private port infrastructure developer, reported its consolidated net income in the second fiscal quarter, which ended Sept. 30, was $56 million, rising 24 percent year-over-year.

Former Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association President Jesse M. Calhoon died this week at the age of 90 in Naples, Fla.

The New York Shipping Association and the International Longshoremen’s Association said “bureaucratic delays” by the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor are jeopardizing productivity at the East Coast’s busiest port.

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach together this year will spend more than $1 billion for deeper channels, taller cranes, terminal automation, intermodal connectors and environmental enhancements, and most of the record spend is being driven by bigger ships.

Despite the Port of Antwerp’s cargo volume increase of 3 percent year-over-year in the first nine months of 2013, the gain was offset by an almost matching decline in its key container traffic.

Four super-post-Panamax cranes that arrived at the Port of Savannah in June are now fully operational at Georgia Ports Authority’s Garden City Terminal.

Terminal operators at the Port of Seattle filed a request with the Federal Maritime Commission to form a discussion agreement that would allow the terminals to jointly discuss operations, facilities, services and other matters in an effort to increase efficiency at the port.

West Coast ports today are capable of handling the water and landside demands that the current generation of big ships are making on their infrastructure, but they must spend billions of additional dollars to accommodate even bigger container ships that will call there in the next few years.

It certainly didn’t get wide play, but when President Obama spoke about the transformation of an industrial warehouse during his February State of the Union Address, the message to supply chain interests rang loud and clear. “A once-shuttered warehouse is now a state-of-the art lab where new workers are mastering the 3D printing that has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything,” he said.

The Port of Oakland is one of the busiest reefer ports in the country. That it’s close to California’s Central Valley growing area and the last port of call for a number of carriers before vessels head back to Asia are two of the main reasons for its reefer growth.

APM Terminals and Rotterdam dock unions have agreed on a labor contract for Europe’s biggest container terminal, which will open next year.

The Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor has scheduled a series of public hearings to highlight what commission official contend are discriminatory hiring practices for longshore workers in the Port of New York and New Jersey.

Transportation and warehousing businesses added 23,000 jobs in September, mostly in transit and passenger transportation, as total nonfarm employment increased by 148,000 jobs, the U.S. Labor Department said on Oct. 22.

The Port of Virginia handled more than 185,185 TEUs in September, putting the port’s year-to-date volume growth at 6.3 percent.