With the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach expected to be grappling with terminal congestion and vessel backlogs for at least the next two to three months, trans-Pacific carriers are boosting capacity to Oakland and Seattle-Tacoma. <\/p>\n
According to Wednesday\u2019s issue of Alphaliner, ZIM Integrated Shipping Services will launch a service beginning Feb. 21 that will call in Southeast Asia, Los Angeles, Tacoma, and Vladivostok, Russia, before returning to Laem Chabang, Thailand. <\/p>\n
Alphaliner also reported that Wan Hai Lines in mid-March will double its current two trans-Pacific strings to four, which includes a new Pacific Northwest service from North Asia to Seattle and Oakland that will not call in Southern California. <\/p>\n
While these developments demonstrate the continued importance of Los Angeles-Long Beach to trans-Pacific services, the new Wan Hai service also highlights a move by carriers to increase their direct calls to the Northwest Seaport Alliance of Seattle and Tacoma, and to Oakland, to bypass congested Southern California ports. <\/p>\n
The executive directors of Oakland and the Northwest Seaport Alliance told JOC.com this week carriers are in advanced stages of planning additional services to their ports. Those services will be designed for intermodal shipments to the US interior that otherwise could have moved through Los Angeles-Long Beach, but more importantly, will serve distribution warehouses and e-commerce shipments in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. <\/p>\n
Danny Wan, executive director of the Port of Oakland, said his pitch to carriers is not so much that Oakland is an alternative to Los Angeles-Long Beach, but rather that it is the closest port to the large consuming market in the San Francisco Bay area, and to import distribution hubs in Northern California, Reno, Salt Lake City, and Denver. <\/p>\n
\u201cYes, we may pick up some business diverted from Southern California, but once they come here they will stay here because Oakland is more convenient to these markets,\u201d Wan said. <\/p>\n
Oakland and Seattle-Tacoma are assuring carriers that they have the terminal capacity to handle an influx of cargo, and that upon arrival their vessels will be able to proceed immediately to berth. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have no vessels at anchor here,\u201d said John Wolfe, executive director of the Northwest Seaport Alliance of Seattle and Tacoma. \u201cEvery terminal here has unused capacity.\u201d <\/p>\n
Due to a sustained cargo surge that is now in its eighth month, and is projected to continue well into the spring, Los Angeles-Long Beach is experiencing vessel backlogs and congested marine terminals. Vessel delays in the port complex average about seven days, according to the Signal platform published daily by the Port of Los Angeles. Container dwell times at the terminals in December averaged five days, or twice what they were last spring, according to the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association. <\/p>\n
Terminal operators in Los Angeles-Long Beach told JOC.com that container volumes will remain much stronger than in past years this spring, and they said the ports will contend with congestion well into the second quarter. <\/p>\n
Carriers have already begun to circumvent Southern California with new services to Oakland and Seattle-Tacoma. In the past two months, carriers have announced two new trans-Pacific services to North America\u2019s Pacific Coast that do not call Los Angeles-Long Beach first. CMA CGM launched its Golden Gate Bridge service (a restructuring of the former SeaPriority Express service) with a rotation of Yantian, Oakland, Seattle, Shanghai, and Yantian. <\/p>\n
Also, Mediterranean Shipping Co. in December started its Chinook service with a rotation of Yantian, Shanghai, Busan, Vancouver, and Yantian. Oakland, Seattle-Tacoma advantages <\/p>\n The port directors in Seattle-Tacoma and Oakland told JOC.com other announcements of direct services to their gateways could follow this spring, although they did not specify which carriers they are speaking with. They said their discussions with carriers begin with the logistics advantages their ports offer. <\/p>\n Wolfe stressed the ability of vessels to proceed directly to berth in Seattle-Tacoma without having to wait at anchor. He said container discharges begin quickly upon berthing, and the first train with intermodal shipments destined for the Midwest leaves within 48 hours of container discharges from the vessel. Except for some sporadic equipment shortages, the railroads have provided the rail-car capacity the port complex requires, he said. <\/p>\n When a vessel berths in Oakland, it is usually turned in one, two, or three eight-hour shifts, depending upon the container exchange, said Bryan Brandes, the port\u2019s maritime director. Container moves to and from trains at the port\u2019s on-dock rail yard are likewise rapid, he said. Also, the port offers transloading operations within its boundaries at the former Oakland Army Base, which has been redeveloped as a logistics hub for import and export operations, Brandes noted. <\/p>\n Oakland, however, continues to grapple with lengthy truck turn times. In January, turn times averaged 96 minutes, higher than the 88-minute average in Los Angeles-Long Beach, according to the Harbor Trucking Association (HTA), which measures turn times in both gateways. Average truck turn times in Oakland the past year have been in the range of 82 to 98 minutes, while turn times in Los Angeles-Long Beach were in the 70 to 88-minute range, according to the HTA\u2019s truck mobility data. <\/p>\n Oakland International Container Terminal (OICT), which handles about 70 percent of the port\u2019s volume, pushed up the port\u2019s total average turn times last month as one of its four berths was out of commission for 16 days while OICT discharged three new ship-to-shore cranes, Brandes said. He expects turn times to improve now that the cranes have been installed at OICT. <\/p>\n Wolfe and Brandes commended the longshore labor force, which continues to work through the COVID-19 pandemic conditions without serious disruption. According to the Pacific Maritime Association, which manages the coastwide waterfront contract with the International Longshore & Warehouse Union, only about 100 longshore workers combined in the northern ports of Oakland, Portland, and Seattle-Tacoma tested positive for COVID-19 in December. Los Angeles-Long Beach recorded 360 positive cases, which contributed to labor shortages in Southern California. <\/p>\n Oakland and Seattle-Tacoma are not marketing themselves as temporary refuges for carriers to escape crowded conditions in Los Angeles-Long Beach, but rather as long-term investments in gateways that provide immediate access to rapidly growing distribution complexes, direct rail access to intermodal hubs in the US interior, and affluent consumers that generate a strong base of on-line shopping. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s because of that stickiness that Oakland warrants services of its own\u201d Brandes said. <\/p>\n While Oakland seeks to attract new trans-Pacific services, Larry Burns, president of Lawrence Burns Consulting and former senior vice president of trade and sales at HMM, said simply changing the rotation of a Pacific Southwest service to call first in Oakland and then in Southern California would allow a carrier to quickly discharge local and intermodal cargo in the Northern California gateway while not having to bypass Southern California altogether, which would offer certain advantages to carriers and their customers. <\/p>\n Carriers could carry time-sensitive inbound loads for the regional market in Northern California without the schedule disruption that comes from calling first in Southern California. They would also take delivery of export loads in Oakland, which has consistently strong export volumes. The vessels would then call in Los Angeles-Long Beach to pick up empty containers for repositioning in Asia, where there are severe shortages of empty containers.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cThe carrier keeps to its schedule and also picks up empties in LA. Suddenly the empties become more valuable,\u201d Burns said.<\/p>\n With the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach expected to be grappling with terminal congestion and vessel backlogs for at least the next two to three months, trans-Pacific carriers are boosting capacity to Oakland and Seattle-Tacoma. According to Wednesday\u2019s issue of Alphaliner, ZIM Integrated Shipping Services will launch a service beginning Feb. 21 that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1992,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1981\/revisions\/1992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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