Port News

A strike by employees of MyFerryLink has closed Port of Calais, snarling trucks seeking to use ferry services to cross the English Channel, according to the BBC.

The damage inflicted by months of West Coast port congestion and supply chain delays lingers even now, more than a month after management and labor ratified a new longshore contract on May 22. Trans-Pacific volumes at West Coast ports have returned to normal levels, but the ports and carriers that call them lost market share in the first five months of 2015. The only winners were non-vessel-operating common carriers and East Coast ports.

Container trailer groups in the Nhava Sheva port complex issued a trade notice suspending drayage operations to and from APM Terminals-run Gateway Terminals India, effective Tuesday, sparking another round of congestion woes for shippers and carriers using India’s largest box gateway, also known as Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust.

If Hong Kong was added to a table of China’s top 20 container ports, it would slot in at number four both in terms of cumulative throughput this year and in May volumes, according to the Shanghai Shipping Exchange.

Owner-operator drivers in New Orleans protested truck turn times and construction delays at the Napoleon Avenue Container Terminal, but port officials said the demonstration did not affect operations.

A slew of U.S. shippers and supply chain stakeholders Monday threw their support behind new legislation aimed at providing Congress with a database of port performance metrics in order to avoid a repeat of the crippling West Coast longshore labor negotiations earlier this year.

A West Coast terminal operator that suffered through three years of International Longshore and Warehouse Union work slowdowns at the Port of Portland is promoting legislation that would make maritime labor slowdowns illegal.

Analysis of more than 125,000 port calls in 2014 ranked six ports in China and two ports from the United Arab Emirates among the Top 10 for the year.

Container terminals in Hong Kong have joined Maersk Line in calling for the territory’s government to address competition law concerns that threaten to make the liner business illegal from next year.

DP World will use automated cargo-handling at a container port it plans to open this year at Yarimca, Turkey, on the Sea of Marmara near Istanbul. The terminal, DP World’s first in Turkey, will have capacity of 1.3 million 20-foot-equivalent units a year.

Chilean ports have been hit by a series of brief strikes by port workers protesting terms of a labor reform approved last week by the lower chamber of the nation’s congress.

Shippers face a two-pronged threat of strikes at Brazil’s Port of Santos, the largest in South America.

Preliminary studies for the proposed Jasper Ocean Terminal on the Georgia-South Carolina border will continue during the next fiscal year with $2.5 million in funding from the states’ port authorities.

Critics of the five-year contract ratified in May by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the Pacific Maritime Association say the benefits were weighted heavily in favor of the union, but PMA President Jim McKenna says that wasn’t the case at all.

A U.S. trade group representing public port authorities Thursday voiced caution over new legislation aimed at providing Congress with a database of port performance metrics in order to avoid a repeat of the crippling West Coast longshore labor negotiations earlier this year.

The U.S. Coast Guard has unveiled a new cybersecurity plan, the latest in an ongoing effort to protect U.S seaports and the commercial vessels that berth there from the rising risk of cyberattack.

U.S. importers are rapidly moving more containers through Port Metro Vancouver and to Chicago and the upper Midwest, dealing another blow to the ports of Seattle and Tacoma.

Molly Campbell, former deputy executive director at the Port of Los Angeles, has been chosen to succeed Richard Larrabee, who is retiring after 15 years as director of the port commerce at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The feasibility of a container “subway” in Singapore to carry containers from a new mega-port through underground tunnels is being studied.

The South Carolina Ports Authority handled record container volume in May and approved $165.5 million in capital spending on new and expanded facilities during its fiscal year that begins July 1.

The Port of Long Beach in May recorded its busiest month since October 2007, indicating that cargo volumes are returning to pre-recession levels and the worst effects of the labor disruptions this past year are over.

Plans to invest 198.4 billion reais ($63.83 billion) in infrastructure concession projects have been announced in Brazil this past week by President Dilma Rousseff. Roughly 37.4 billion reais is expected to be invested in the port sector.

Cosco Pacific reported growing container volumes across all its geographical sectors with 28 million TEUs handled by China’s second largest port operator in the first five months of the year.

APM Terminals will add two super-post-Panamax cranes at its terminal at the Port of Mobile, Alabama, and expand the port’s container terminal by 20 acres.

The Port of Virginia and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have signed an agreement to share the cost to study the feasibility of deepening Hampton Roads port channels to as much as 55 feet.

The Port of Rotterdam continues to position itself as a pre-eminent European port of call for mega-ships with the arrival of three new cranes at the ECT Delta Terminal at Maasvlakte.

Container volume at the Port of Los Angeles edged up 0.8 percent in May as the largest U.S. port looks for direction following a lengthy period of congestion and labor issues over the past year.

The Port of Oakland in May had its busiest month in almost four years, handling 213,260 20-foot-equivalent container units and sign that operations have returned to normal after months of congestion. The total volume of import, export and empty containers was up 3.8 percent from May 2014.

It seems nothing can stop the slide in Hong Kong container traffic as the port reported its 11th consecutive month of declining throughput growth in May with volumes falling 12.7 percent year-over-year.

India’s Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust and Peel Ports, owner of the port of Liverpool in the United Kingdom, have signed a memorandum of understanding to facilitate long-term, strategic cooperation.

In its most aggressive move in the African market in years, APM Terminals has begun construction on a new container terminal at Ghana’s largest container gateway and plans to invest heavily on inland connections to allow growing volume to move more efficiently to and from the hinterland.

Just two months after the Port of Virginia’s container volumes broke their all-time high, they did it again — the latest sign that cargo diversions from a still-recovering U.S. West Coast may have more staying power than originally imagined.

Shippers and carriers using the Brazilian port of Santos are bracing themselves for delays and dislocation next week as the Santos Union of Stevedores prepares to stage a 12-hour strike on a day yet to be decided.

After the eight months of West Coast port congestion that crimped U.S. shippers’ supply chains, 43 percent of surveyed shippers who have negotiated annual trans-Pacific contracts said they will shift shipments to East Coast ports. But of those shippers who told JOC.com they would reroute cargo away from the West Coast, half said less than 5 percent of that freight would be permanently diverted through new contracts for 2015-2016.

U.S. Gulf ports’ container traffic started strong in 2015, with more than a little help from slowdowns and congestion that hobbled West Coast ports and made shippers look for alternatives.

The Port of Prince Rupert had another big month in May with total container volume increasing 45.6 percent over May 2014.

The Hong Kong government this week said it would move forward with plans to expand container capacity at its Kwai Tsing Container Terminals. But move is unlikely to mollify critics who say the investment is too little too late to maintain the port’s market share of Pearl River Delta traffic.

Port Canaveral opens its first container terminal. CEO John Walsh says volume at the Florida port could eventually grow to 3 million to 4 million TEUs

The chief executive of the port of Piraeus is resigning as the Greek government proceeds with the controversial privatization of the leading Mediterranean container hub.

APM Terminals estimates it will take 7 to 10 days for operations to return to normal after striking stevedores returned to work Friday at the company’s general cargo terminal in Callao, Peru.