Hang together or
hang separately?
Hang together or
hang separately?
BY MARK B. SOLOMON, SENIOR EDITOR
MARITIME/PORTS
transportationreport
The ports of
Seattle and
Tacoma have
gained approval
to pool information to address
“unprecedented”
pressures. Will
they be just the
first ports to go
this route, or the
only ones?
AT A CONGRESSIONAL HEARING IN JUNE 2008, JEAN GODWIN, EXECUTIVE VICE
president and general counsel of the American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA), laid
out the core difference between her members and their customers. “Unlike carriers and shippers, ports cannot move their assets, which are the product of the investment of billions of
dollars of public funds,” Godwin testified. This inflexibility means that ports “can be whipsawed by the other players” in the industry, she said.
Godwin’s remarks were prophetic. In the years to come, shipping lines would endure a
financial meltdown, a severe global recession, and billions of dollars in losses from uneven
demand, overcapacity, and rate wars stemming from both conditions. Since 2011, two major
liner alliances, the G6 and the P3, have sprung up to rationalize sailing capacity—and possibly dictate freight rates—on the world’s major sea lanes. Meanwhile, a megacontainership
capable of carrying up to 18,500 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) has hit the water,
promising enormous economies of scale as well as fewer ship calls at ports. An estimated 42
percent of current ship orders are for vessels exceeding 12,000 TEUs, according to Drewry
Maritime Consultants, a U.K. consultancy.
On the port front, British Columbia’s Port of Prince Rupert, a relatively minor player in
2008, has grown to challenge U.S. West Coast ports in the trans-Pacific intermodal trade.
Mexico’s Lázaro Cárdenas has made inroads of its own south of the border. The Panama
Canal expansion project, a glimmer in the eye in 2008, is two-thirds of its way to completion.
