[討論]US West Coast ports vie for China trade

August 29, 2005 Boom spurs spending by ports from Vancouver to Mexico which are aiming to rival Los Angeles Challenged: Rivals eye some of the rising traffic from the port complex at Los Angeles and Long Beach OAKLAND is spending US$1.2 billion for port improvements over 10 years to lure shippers like Mitsui OSK Lines Ltd as exports pour out of China and other Asian countries. While worrisome to the White House, the US trade deficit with China, totalling US$15.8 billion in May, is fuelling expansion at West Coast ports. From Vancouver, Canada, to Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico, ports are battling to gain a greater share of the business of moving goods. They want to poach some of the rising traffic from the busiest port complex in the US, at Los Angeles and Long Beach. Oakland port wooed Mitsui OSK, Japan's No 2 shipper, by investing to expand terminals, improve rail facilities and deepen channels. 'It's a competitive game up and down the West Coast, and they are going to fight for that cargo,' says David Olson, 64, a political science professor at the University of Washington in Seattle who has studied ports for 20 years. The complex at Los Angeles and Long Beach - gateway for more than a third of all containerised US imports - is struggling to handle record cargo while remaining the quickest entry and transit point for goods from China and other Asian exporters moving into the US market. As much as a third of the cargo entering the adjacent city- owned-and-operated ports is up for grabs because it is destined for - or originates from - US cities outside the region, Mr Olson says. Rival ports are adding terminal capacity, dredging waterways to permit passage of giant new ships and installing mammoth cranes to unload containers from Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore. Oakland spent US$14 million in March to install two 24-story cranes. Switches The ports' investments are starting to pay off. Companies like Tokyo-based Mitsui OSK and AP Moeller-Maersk A/S of Copenhagen, the world's largest container-shipping company, have changed some trans-Pacific routes to Oakland, Tacoma in Washington state, and Vancouver to avoid the congestion at the Southern California complex. Mitsui switched after labour shortages and jammed rail lines at Los Angeles delayed unloading last year. 'Carriers have no choice but to consider changes like this,' says John Gurrad, 63, vice-president of business planning at MOL America, Mitsui OSK's North American unit. Four Mitsui ships will now call once weekly at Oakland, replacing a service that previously stopped first at Los Angeles. The rival ports have grabbed an increasing share of arriving West Coast cargo - most of it exports from Asia - which the US Commerce Department estimates will surge 14 per cent this year over the record high of 2004. Los Angeles port expects no growth above the 7.4 million containers it moved last year. During the first half of 2005, the number of full, incoming containers at Los Angeles and Long Beach rose 3.2 per cent to 3.39 million standard-size containers. By comparison, incoming traffic surged 30 per cent at Oakland to 391,715 containers, and 25 per cent at Tacoma to 342,995. From January to May, incoming full containers rose 8.3 per cent at Vancouver to 333,662. Last year, congestion at the Los Angeles complex diverted more than 115 incoming ships carrying goods worth up to US$4 billion. The twin ports handled a combined 13.1 million standard-size containers - arriving and departing, empty and full. The complex is the most advanced in the US. Even so, it hasn't kept pace as imports surged 43 per cent in value to US$1.76 trillion from 1999 to the end of 2004, according to the US Department of Commerce. The delays reduced Los Angeles's advantage and encouraged other ports to woo shippers. Moving in In January, the port of Tacoma opened a US$210 million terminal built for Taipei-based Evergreen Marine Corp, Asia's largest shipping company. The port of Vancouver aims to triple its container volume with a C$1 billion (S$1.4 billion), 15-year expansion project. Copenhagen-based Maersk Sealand, a unit of AP Moeller-Maersk, has added two eastbound stops at Tacoma, one at Vancouver and another at Newark, New Jersey, through the Panama Canal, Maersk spokeswoman Anne Kappel said in an e-mail. APL Ltd, a subsidiary of Singapore's Neptune Orient Lines Ltd, the world's sixth-biggest cargo company, last year added ships from Hong Kong during peak shipping season from June to October that call first on the port of Seattle rather than Los Angeles. The switch helped ease congestion, and APL plans to do the same this year, says Mike Zampa, a spokesman for APL America. The market share of the Southern California complex declined to about 57 per cent of all Asian containerised imports into the US in 2004 from about 60 per cent in 2001, says John Martin, president of consultancy Martin & Associates. 'Shippers realised they need to diversify their ports of entry,' he says. Products bound for New York from Asia can save a week moving through the Port of Los Angeles compared with the 25-day trip via the Panama Canal. Ships reach Los Angeles within 11 days, and it takes another week to move shipments by truck or rail to the East Coast, if there are no delays. The Panama Canal, the world's second-biggest after Egypt's Suez Canal, is near capacity and is too small for the largest new ships - some more than 1,000 feet long and capable of carrying as many as 10,000 containers, twice as many as the largest ships five years ago. The Panama Canal Authority is considering adding locks that would create a third lane of traffic and allow larger ships to pass, says Francisco Miguez, chief of the coordinating team for the canal-expansion master plan. The project must be voted on by Panamanians in a nationwide referendum, which may be called as early as next year, he says. 'If we could get approval on the referendum next year, we could start construction on the project by 2008 and have it online probably by 2013 or early 2014,' he says. While Los Angeles and Long Beach may lose some business, they're unlikely to lose their place as the preferred gateway for Asian imports, says Mr Olson. 'They are enormously rich and in the past have been able to buy their way out of congestion.' Pacific North-west ports and Oakland will have to convince shippers they can handle more cargo while avoiding pitfalls that clogged Southern California's transportation network. 'The same challenges exist in Seattle, Tacoma and Oakland,' says John D Bowe, 55, regional president of APL's Americas unit. Union Pacific Corp and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp, the two biggest US railroads, say they are focusing their investments on capital improvements at Los Angeles and Long Beach. Union Pacific is installing a second track along its Sunset Route, which runs from the Los Angeles Basin to El Paso, Texas, says spokesman John Bromley. 'Los Angeles will continue to serve as the primary US entry point for goods shipped from Asia,' Maersk Sealand's Ms Kappel says. 'Other ports cannot match its combination of size, capacity, inter-modal connections, local consumer market, labour pool and warehousing.' That won't keep the others from trying. Ports in the US, Mexico and Canada will open or expand operations in coming years. Hong Kong's Hutchison Whampoa Ltd's Hutchison Port Holdings, the world's largest port developer, is spending US$290 million to expand Mexican facilities at Lazaro Cardenas in Michoacan state. In the Canadian province of British Columbia, the port of Prince Rupert aims to handle 400,000 standard-size containers by 2006. It handles none now. Canadian National Railway Co and Maher Terminals Inc will build tracks and a terminal at the port. Long-term 'In the very long term those ports, certainly those in Mexico, may be important,' says Ezra Finkin, a spokesman for the Waterfront Coalition, an importers trade group based in Washington. 'That will take a massive amount of money. I'm not convinced there would be enough demand at some of these ports to justify that investment.' That's true if Asian trade slows, though no one is expecting that, says Mr Martin. 'Trade with Asia has basically sustained itself for so long that no one realises and understands the implications of what a slowing or collapse of the Chinese economy would mean,' he says.