CHARLESTON: The head of one of the fastest-growing ports said the days of U.S. ports gateways unwilling or unable to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure to become a top 10 port are limited. Without major investments in deeper harbors, larger terminals, taller cranes and extensive rail and highway infrastructure, ports will literally miss the boat in the era of big ships, said Jim Newsome, president and CEO of the South Carolina Ports Authority.
Ocean carriers, by concentrating their vessel orders on mega-ships with capacities ranging from 7,500 to 20,000 twenty-foot-equivalent units, are sending a clear message to ports in the major east-west trade lanes that gateways unable to physically accommodate big ships, turn them quickly at berth, and move the containers efficiently to inland destinations through excellent road and railway connectors will start to lose cargo to top-10 ports.
“This is a big-ship industry,” Newsome said. Charleston will invest $1 billion by 2020 to remain a top-10 port, which means ports in the Southeast — the fastest-growing region of the country that do not invest heavily in port and inland infrastructure will be fair game for cargo diversion. “Some ports can’t invest in big-ship terminals, so we’ll get some of that cargo,” he said.
Charleston, and its closest rival, Savannah, are investing heavily to be big-ship ready when the Panama Canal expansion project is completed next spring and vessels of about 13,000 TEU-capacity will be able to transit the canal on all-water services from Asia. Vessels much larger than that can easily transit the Suez Canal today.
Savannah will begin deepening its harbor this month from 42 to 47 feet in a $763 million project scheduled for completion in 2018. Charleston on Monday received the go-ahead from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to begin dredging its waters to a depth of 52 feet in a $521 million project aiming for a 2019 completion.
Savannah in the first half of 2015 saw its container volumes increase 14 percent to about 1.7 million TEUs, Charleston was up 12 percent to about 918,000 TEUs, while Jacksonville’s volume increased only 2 percent to about 443,000 TEUs.
Newsome said he expects vessels with capacities of 13,800 TEUs will be calling in Charleston “in the next two to three years,” and that will be just a taste of what is to come. About 90 percent of the vessels that are on order for the global fleet are 7,500-TEU capacity greater. While most of those ships begin their lives in the Asia-Europe trades, before long they are cascaded into the trans-Pacific. Los Angeles and Long Beach, which have no draft restrictions, regularly handle vessels of 13,000 to 14,000-TEU capacity.
