Port News

Capacity expansion at Bangladesh’s second port of Mongla is meant to relieve congestion at the busy port of Chittagong, where frequent vessel backlogs result in delays and demurrage costs for shippers.

Following imposing draft restrictions in four of the last six years, Panama Canal Administrator Ricaurte Vásquez says a new approach is needed since the value of the larger locks, completed for some $5.25 billion in 2016, is for naught if full water draft can’t be guaranteed.

With Canadian National Railway’s Eastern Canadian network virtually shut down due to First Nation blockades protesting a planned pipeline, shipping and other business groups are urging Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to bring an end to the conflict.

Europe’s hub ports are bracing for the impact of the coronavirus on volumes as the number of canceled sailings reached unprecedented levels.

Colombo had respectable container volume growth last year, but saw its dominance over Indian cargo begin to slip following cabotage reform enacted in mid-2018.

A rail blockade in Ontario as part of a more than week-long First Nation protest against a proposed oil pipeline in Canada remains in place, and CN’s eastern Canadian network is at a near standstill.

The Port of Houston has been awarded a $21.8 million federal grant to help fund the extension of a berth at the Bayport Container Terminal.

Federal grants totaling almost $33 million for the neighboring ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will help support intermodal rail efficiency at the Southern California port complex.

PortMiami won a $44 million federal grant which will be used to improve the cold chain cargo facilities to handle temperature-controlled food, and perishables such as flowers.

The Northwest Seaport Alliance is pushing infrastructure development, terminal modernization, process improvements, and rail enhancements to become more efficient and make the gateway more competitive in the trans-Pacific trade.

Shippers in Bangladesh are preparing for delays and higher costs after the Chittagong Port Authority implemented a precautionary measure related to the coronavirus that will keep vessels coming from China idling offshore for at least a week.

The award of two federal grants to the Jacksonville Port Authority (JAXPORT) will help fund a dredging project that will allow the port to handle larger vessels.

A weak performance in the second half of 2019 caused Rotterdam to end the year with only a slight gain in cargo volume.

The reform measure approved by India’s federal cabinet aims to provide more functional independence — operational and financial — to public ports that have stagnated due to years of underinvestment and bureaucratic controls.

Container dwell times in Vancouver and Prince Rupert are mounting as First Nations demonstrators defy court injunctions and continue to blockade Canadian National mainlines in Western Canada and Ontario. CN cancelled hundreds of trains this week.

A seven-year expansion at the Port Newark Container Terminal (PNCT) is close to completion, expanding the terminal’s capacity by 80 percent, to 2.15 million TEU.

The USDOT has appropriated more than $50 million for two berth improvement projects in Charleston and Savannah, while President Donald Trump has proposed funds in his fiscal 2021 budget to complete dredging the Savannah River inner harbor.

Six port projects backed by the US Army Corp of Engineers will get funds totaling more than $400 million to deepen and widen port channels, including in the Port of Mobile, on the Mississippi River and Port Everglades.

Congestion and excessive container dwell times at the ports of Vancouver and Prince Rupert began to dissipate Monday following the cleanup of rock slides along rail lines in British Columbia and an injunction against First Nations’ protestors who were blocking truck traffic in Vancouver.

Supply chain participants should be putting coronavirus contingency plans in place, not only for what appears to be inevitable near-term disruption of their China-based supply chains, but also for potential knock-on effects that could extend well beyond the Chinese economic sphere.

Citing ever-increasing vessel sizes and a desire to not lose future business to private ports, the Indian government will move ahead with the development of a deep-water container port about 120 miles north of its primary gateway Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust.

The Georgia Ports Authority outlined an ambitious plan to grow its footprint that includes acquiring new land near its Garden City Terminal to hold more containers, a partial container conversion at its breakbulk Ocean Terminal, and a brand new container terminal.

Bangladesh’s top port of Chittagong says shippers will have one week to move containers that have overstayed their free time in storage that is at 78 percent capacity.

The Pacific Merchant Shipping Association says the economic impact -- cargo diversion -- of a proposed clean truck fee in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach as contained in a recent study is based on incomplete information and the analysis should be reworked.

APM Terminals Elizabeth has announced it will launch a reservation system in late February, becoming the second of the six terminals at the Port of New York and New Jersey to operate an appointment system.

Georgia is looking to recapture a good portion of the Chinese frozen chicken import market now that Beijing has dropped a ban that had been in place since early 2015 due to a US avian flu outbreak.

Australian shippers are breathing a sigh of relief, at least for now, after a court order was issued preventing longshore workers from striking against DP World Australia amid an ongoing 16-month contract dispute.

A pilot program about to begin in the Port of New York and New Jersey would make the data from the port’s container information portal easier to use and help truckers and shippers more effectively manage their cargo.

JNPT, India’s busiest public container harbor, has issued a trade notice setting a uniform rate scale linked to handling services for transshipment containers as part of what it called a move to “eliminate discrepancies.”

With the expected March completion of a project to widen its turning basis, the Port of Wilmington in North Carolina will be able to boost handling capabilities that are currently capped at 12,000-TEU ships.

The Port of Montreal is looking for a new CEO and president after Sylvie Vachon announced she will retire after 30 years, the last 11 years leading the port, as cargo volumes -- especially Asian cargo -- grew.

It has taken many years, but tangible progress is finally being made in the engineering works to widen and deepen the Port of Hamburg’s key access waterway.

Advancing the project to widen its shipping channel is the top priority for the Port of Houston in 2020 as it faces rapidly growing cargo volumes.

FlexiVan Leasing has announced a merger with American Intermodal Management, growing its US chassis pool by 12,500 units to 137,500 and acquiring new equipment.

Carriers are pushing back against the latest move by Indian regulators to streamline logistics costs, saying it will result in inefficiencies and delays in trade flows.

The combination of Mexico’s economic woes and weakness among key trading partners pulled down the volume of cargo moving through Mexican ports in 2019, the first year volumes have fallen since 2013.

CN’s new approach to developing the ports of Halifax and Quebec comes after its limited success in growing intermodal volumes out of the Port of Montreal.

DP World, in a letter to Russian regulators seeking to buy a stake in intermodal transport group Fesco, said it would invest $350 million in the Vladivostok seaport and expand the company’s railcar fleet.

A strike by French dockworkers this week is causing severe disruption to carrier schedules as port calls to Le Havre and Marseilles-Fos are cut.

As India continues its transparency push for logistics costs, regulators are turning an eye toward the pricing practices followed by carriers for container yard-to-container yard shipments.