Port News

The port of Savannah finished 2015 with record volume, including a 20.4 percent increase in full import containers, but Georgia Ports Authority CEO Curtis Foltz said growth is likely to slow this year.

Four container terminals at the Port of New York and New Jersey will remain closed for a second day as the U.S. Northeast dug out after a weekend winter storm buried the region with two or more feet of snow.

Jawaharal Nehru Port Trust, India’s biggest container handler, last week more than doubled its refrigerated cargo-handling capacity when it opened a new reefer site in the harbor.

The Panama Canal Authority is shooting to open its third set of larger locks that can handle post-Panamax ships in May, but it doesn’t expect the larger locks to attract new services for several months.

A month-long industrial unrest in Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, spearheaded by some employees at DP World-operated Nhava Sheva International Container Terminal over demands tied to wage increases and better working conditions, was settled over the weekend, allowing restoration of normal operations at India’s biggest container gateway.

The owner of a container terminal in Brazil plans to pick the top three bidders in the first week of February and request firm offers after receiving 10 non-binding proposals.

The pending departure of Ports America and its joint-venture partner Terminal Investment Ltd. from Oakland will give the port an opportunity to more efficiently utilize its terminal assets and possibly to re-purpose land for non-container uses, executive director Chris Lytle said Thursday.

Some port terminals on the U.S. North Atlantic Coast are revising their operating hours in preparation for Winter Storm Jonas, which is expected to hit the East Coast with heavy snow on Saturday.

After near-unprecedented congestion rocked the Port of Virginia in 2015, the 50-foot-deep port says it’s ready to handle brisk volume growth coming via the larger vessels soon to move through the expanded Panama Canal — and do so efficiently.

Throughput at China’s top container ports expanded in 2015 but figures show a trend of slowing growth amid softer global demand for Chinese-made goods and macroeconomic uncertainty.

The Panama Canal Authority is betting its future on more than a third set of massive new locks that can handle post-Panamax ships and attract more container services. It is counting on construction of a large new container terminal that will serve as a transshipment hub for North and South America and the creation of a new logistics zone along the canal that will attract assembly and light manufacturing activity.

International container traffic in the Northwest Seaport Alliance of Seattle and Tacoma increased 8.4 percent in December from December 2014, driven primarily by strong exports.

The Port of Long Beach is guiding more than $4 billion in investments that will keep the second-largest U.S. container port nimble so it can respond to shifts in global manufacturing and trade patterns, pending mergers among ocean carriers and the arrival of the biggest vessels to call in North America, the port’s CEO Jon Slangerup said in his State of the Port address.

The rate of container cargo traffic decline at Russian seaports is slowing but still remains high, with volume plummeting by 25.1 percent in the fourth quarter, according to the Russian Association of Commercial Seaports.

Gate operations at Nhava Sheva International Container Terminal, which took a hit due to the abrupt disruption earlier this week, have picked up speed over the past two days, according to the latest update from terminal operator DP World Nhava Sheva.

APM Terminals has finalized an agreement to establish a joint venture that will invest over $200 million in upgrading and expanding a container terminal in Cartagena, Colombia’s largest port.

DP World and the Russian Direct Investment Fund today announced the launch of a joint venture that will target investments in ports, transportation and logistics infrastructure in Russia.

When the Panama Canal’s third set of larger locks open to commercial traffic this spring, the massive expansion project will be more than a year and a half behind the original target date of October 2014 and an estimated $150 million over the $5.25 billion budget set 10 years ago.

International Container Transshipment Terminal, or Vallarpadam, at India’s Port of Cochin expanded its intermodal freight access earlier this week when state-owned Container Corp. of India introduced a weekly train service connecting the DP World facility with Coimbatore, a major southern India inland point.

Greece has accepted a “significantly improved” offer from China’s Cosco Group for the state’s majority stake in the Piraeus Port Authority.

International Container Terminal Services Inc. is expanding its footprint in Africa and the Middle East with two new terminals under development and an eye for more opportunities in the region.

Despite watershed changes taking place in the shipping industry in 2016, the market share of containerized imports of East, West and Gulf Coast ports this year is set look a lot like it did during the second half of 2015, according to port and industry analysts.

Container volume at the Port of Charleston rose 10.1 percent last year, to 1.97 million 20-foot-equivalent units, but the port authority’s chief executive expects slower growth during the first half of 2016.

New Orleans Cold Storage has more than doubled the size of its facility near Charleston, South Carolina, with an 81,000-square-foot expansion that more than doubles its blast-freezing capacity.

Dockworker unions at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust on Tuesday agreed to recall their previous notice calling for a stoppage on Jan. 20 over demands tied to medical benefits following an intervention by port management that averted disruptions that would have placed more pressure on shippers and ocean carriers using India’s biggest container handler.

Contship Italia’s container traffic declined in 2015 but it maintained its leading market position in Italy as four of its five domestic terminals posted higher volumes.

Greece’s privatization agency will today weigh an improved offer from China’s Cosco Pacific for a majority stake in the port of Piraeus.

Ports America and its joint venture partner announced Tuesday it will terminate in March its 50-year lease for the Outer Harbor Terminal in Oakland as the company concentrates its investments in other U.S. container ports to prepare for today’s mega-ships operated by powerful carrier alliances, according to Peter Ford, chief strategy officer.

Nhava Sheva International Container Terminal, a DP World facility at India’s Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, on Tuesday said operations have returned to “near normal speed” and all freight accesses are open, a day after the private operator was forced to close following blockades set up by striking employees at entry gates.

Chinese investors aren’t scaling back on freight projects in Russia even though both countries’ economies are suffering, according to Russia’s minister of Far East development.

The port of Antwerp has said that it expects the European Commission to clear it of a charge from logistics group Katoen Natie that it had been guilty of discrimination in its treatment of the port’s leading container terminal operators.

India has ousted China as the emerging market with the most growth potential, according to a global survey of more than 1,100 logistics and supply chain executives.

Shore handling charges at the key East Africa gateway ports of Mombasa and Dar es Salaam increased in 2015 while port dwell times for cargo continued to languish well below global standards.

After bottlenecks and delays in 2014, it was tempting to greet the lack of congestion in ports across Asia in 2015 with relief, but the open berthing windows and “come right in” signs were, in fact, an indicator of falling demand.

European cargo terminal operators today called on their national governments to clarify regulations requiring all containers to be weighed before they are loaded onto ships.

Container ship berth times at Australia’s Port of Brisbane were the shortest among the top four gateways in the country, despite the port handling the largest vessels in the trade, CargoSmart data shows.

To meet potential California environmental rules, marine terminals in Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland would spend billions of dollars more by replacing diesel-powered container-handling equipment with units powered by electricity, according to an engineering report.

The opening of larger Panama Canal locks, already postponed several times by construction delays, has been pushed back again and now is expected early in the second quarter, a canal official said.

Nhava Sheva International Container Terminal reopened to partial operations this afternoon after striking employees forced a temporary halt to all shipping activities at the DP World facility by staging blockades at entry gates on Sunday, adding to the trade woes that had already been building at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, India’s busiest, public, container gateway.

Port truckers at the Port of New York and New Jersey will soon test ways to measure their wait times both inside and outside container terminal gates, providing visibility that could be the basis of an hourly surcharge to drayage customers.