A Drewry report found that U.S. terminals need to use infrastructure better and that ending the PMA’s negotiation with the union won’t fix congestion issues.
A contract settlement between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and employers is not the only challenge facing the congested ports on the U.S. West Coast, according to Drewry.
“Clearly at some stage, one way or another, the congestion will ease as steps are taken to address the issues, and U.S. ports will return to ‘normal.’ However, this norm is still one that sees North American terminals under perform the rest of the world in terms of the intensity of the use of the three key assets of container terminals — the quay line, gantry cranes and terminal land area,” says the London-based shipping consultants in its Container Insight Weekly newsletter.
The newsletter highlighted some of the findings in Drewry’s annual Container Terminal Capacity and Performance Benchmarks report, which found that in 2013, the average North American terminal handled less than 800 TEUs per meter of quay compared to a world average of 1,072 TEUs; less than 100,000 TEUs per gantry crane compared to the world average of 123,489 TEUs; and about half the world average of 24,791 TEUs per hectare.
“North American terminals do not make as intensive use of their infrastructure and equipment as elsewhere. If U.S. terminals could improve this position, then it would help to avoid or defer the onset of any future congestion problems,” it argued.
Some of the reasons why terminal productivity seems low in the U.S. has to do with the traffic they handle. Drewry notes that terminals with a significant proportion of transhipments perform better than those focused more on gateway traffic; U.S. terminals handle very little transshipped cargo.
It also says “gateway traffic handled by U.S. terminals is mainly imports, and import traffic tends to have longer dwell times in the yard than exports, and more complicated handling requirements.”
In addition, Drewry found that typical U.S. terminal size is about 25-percent smaller than the world average, and it said its research “clearly shows that bigger terminals perform better than smaller ones in terms of intensity of asset use. Fragmentation of terminal capacity is, therefore, a very significant issue, especially on the U.S. West Coast.”
Average throughput-per-terminal at large European ports is much greater than in the U.S. In 2013, the average terminal in Rotterdam handled 2.7 million TEUs; in Hamburg, 2.2 million TEUs; in Bremerhaven, 1.9 million TEUs. For comparison, Long Beach and Los Angeles saw 1.1 million TEUs, and there were only 0.4 million TEUs in Seattle and Tacoma.
But with projects such as the Middle Harbor in Long Beach, where two terminals are being combined and automated, Drewry noted, “This is an area where the U.S. ports can and (in some cases) already are seeking to take action and physically consolidate terminals through construction/reconstruction.”
It also said around-the-clock operations on both the landside and shipside at marine terminals are more common in other parts of the world than in the U.S.
After ILWU labor contract is reached, West Coast terminals will face challenges
