GSN Digital Edition April 2016

Maritime/Coastal/Port Security
Mega-ships challenges and benefits for ports
The mega-ship the CMA
CGM Benjamin Franklin
called in at the Port of
Los Angeles in December,
2015. Capable of carrying
18,000 TEUs and only 80%
full, it took four full days
to unload 11,200 cargo
containers in Los Angeles,
ranging from furniture to
electronics to toys. It was
the largest cargo ship ever
to visit the West Coast. Five
days later, the vessel berthed in the
Port of Oakland in the San Francisco
Bay.
In addition to the ports of Los
Angeles and Oakland, there are
currently three other destinations
on the US West Coast capable of
handling mega ships: Long Beach,
Seattle and Tacoma. By next year,
the Canadian Port of Prince Rupert
(British Columbia) will be online,
too.
As reported in the LA Times and
California Sunday Magazine, to prepare
for the arrival of a vessel 1,310
feet long, displacing more than
158,000 tons with a keel extending
more than 34 feet below the water,
Los Angeles port officials, the shipping
line, and the dockworker’s
union planned their logistics for
weeks – even while the cargo was
being loaded in China and South
Korea. Lead times typically run
only two days. It was important to
the port to avoid the disruption of
work bottlenecks so pre-staged rail
cars and truck drivers were carefully
coordinated; the complex logistics
involved harbor pilots and dock
workers as well.
Benefits to the West Coast ports
are clear. The capability of handling
these larger ships will ensure
increasing amounts of trade with
Asia, bringing more employment
for unions and transportation lines.
Although the Panama Canal is being
expanded, its new canal will
only accommodate vessels carrying
13,000 TEUs. As shipping lines
move to larger vessels for their cost
efficiencies, they will seek out locations,
globally, that can support
them. Quartz reports that vessels
capable of handling 21,000 TEUs
30
are now in production.
Terminals around the
world are facing challenges
from these larger ships.
Stresses on port infrastructure
are common: there is a
need for deeper channels,
larger cranes, more dockworkers
for unloading,
truckers and rail lines to
haul the goods. Counterbalancing
the benefits of
welcoming larger ships,
these complexes look at the ROI of
infrastructure improvement in light
of a downturn in the shipping industry,
as world economies struggle.
Moody’s Investors Service predicted
that for 2015 global container ship
capacity would increase about 9%
while demand growth would be less
than half that number.
The Wall Street Journal reported
in February that the Port of Hong
Kong is being skipped by more container
ships due to its shallow channels,
high cargo handling costs, and
busy harbor. (“Hong Kong’s Port
Falls Further,” February 17, 2016, p.
B7.) Shenzhen, Shanghai and Ningbo
terminals are picking up some of
this trade as Hong Kong saw a decrease
in its traffic of 9.5% in 2015
and has fallen to #5 where a decade
ago it was the world’s busiest.