The southeastern ports continued their blistering growth rate, both increasing throughput by over 13 percent for the month.
Major Southeast and Mid-Atlantic ports experienced a surge in container volume during March, with some of the strong double-digit growth attributable to continued diversion of cargo from congested West Coast ports.
The Port of Charleston handled 171,113 TEUs, an increase of 13.7 percent compared to March 2014. For the nine-months of the fiscal year so far, Charleston’s box traffic is up 14.3 percent to almost 1.4 million TEUs, according to the South Carolina Ports Authority.
The actual number of containers lifted, regardless of size, is up 15 percent for the fiscal year-to-date to 97,191. The number of pier moves is important financially because it is the primary metric for how the port gets paid for loading and unloading vessels.
“We’re seeing broad-based growth across all sectors, particularly refrigerated cargo and automotive manufacturing. Discretionary cargo volumes are also up, with the growth of retail imports and agricultural exports reflected in a nearly 25 percent increase in rail moves last month,” port authority CEO Jim Newsome said in a statement last week.
The port authority’s inland terminal in Greer handled 5,187 rail moves in March, achieving its highest volume since the facility opened in November 2013. Since July, the inland port has handled 40,313 intermodal moves and is 52 percent ahead of planned volumes, the SCPA said.
The port authority also reported strong breakbulk business during March.
Meanwhile, the latest monthly data from the Port of Virginia confirms that unrealized container traffic in February due to winter storms spilled over into March, worsening crowded conditions on the docks. The Virginia Port Authority in March handled an all-time record number of containers for a single month with 229,000 TEUs, 16 percent more than the same month a year ago.
Several vessels missed their scheduled arrival dates in February because of the snow and delivered more than 7,000 TEUs of cargo in early March, officials previously said.
The surge of cargo overwhelmed the port, especially the Virginia International Gateway (VIG), where long queues of trucks waited several hours to pick up or deliver containers. Officials have spent the past six weeks issuing a laundry list of congestion mitigation measures, including moving containers by barge from VIG to the Portsmouth Marine Terminal (PMT), relocating cargo handling equipment from other terminals to PMT, purchasing more chassis, opening weekend gates, directing smaller vessels to PMT to free up space at deep-draft terminals, instituting a temporary embargo on empty containers, and building a dedicated container yard at VIG for rail cargo to minimize time spent by cranes culling the stacks.
In March, truck and rail moves at the Port of Virginia were each up 17 percent. The Virginia Inland Port in Front Royal processed 3 percent more containers and barge feeder service to Richmond and Baltimore was down 6 percent.
For the first quarter of the year, container volume is up 10 percent at the port from the same period in 2014.
“Our truck volumes did not let up any in March. We processed more than 81,400 truck moves despite the challenges,” Virginia Port Authority CEO John Reinhart said in a statement on Friday. “We understand the hardship this period put on our motor carriers and customers and we are grateful for their patience through what has been a very difficult period.
“We are not expecting volumes to abate, so we will carry forward many of the steps we implemented in March to help alleviate the congestion. We are continuing to invest in equipment, technology, and people to create sustainability and improve the consistency in the port,” he said.
Import and export volumes at Virginia were fairly balanced, although imports grew 28 percent compared to March 2014. Ship calls were the same as last year at 162. Vehicle units processed by the port increased 148 percent to 4,968.
As previously reported, the Port of Savannah moved 333,058 TEUs in March, up almost 28 percent from March a year ago.
Many of the retail goods being rerouted around the West Coast are ending up in Savannah and Norfolk, Va., while much of Charleston’s growth is from exports and industrial products.
Charleston, Virginia see big gains in March box volumes
