Posted on March 29, 2023
FLORENCE — While many US ports struggled with supply chain problems during the COVID-19 pandemic, South Carolina ports — specifically the Port of Charleston — seized the opportunity to improve.
The Port of Charleston jumped from the ninth to the eighth largest port in the country and knocked the Port of Oakland down one in doing so, said Barbara Melvin, president and CEO of the South Carolina Ports Authority.
Eighty percent of the nation’s imports come in through the nation’s top 10 ports.
Melvin was the Greater Florence Chamber of Commerce’s Outlook Luncheon keynote speaker Wednesday.
“During the pandemic it was pretty obvious to everybody that things weren’t working well in the supply chain,” Melvin said. “We take great care making sure that we remained productive and while other ports struggled close to two years to get rid of the congestion we did it in five months and we did it because we partnered with everyone up and down the supply chain, selflessly, to make sure you got the goods you needed.”
“We all heard about the West Coast ports and we all saw that picture that looked like the Normandy invasion off the West Coast while there were more than 100 ships offshore waiting to be worked,” she said.
Many shippers transited the Panama Canal to the Gulf Coast and East Coast ports to avoid that congestion.
“Charleston grew the third fastest (of U.S. ports) during the last 10 years,” Melvin said. Only Houston and Savannah grew more.
“Our goal is to grow two times the national port market growth rate. We feel the Southeast affords us the opportunity.”
The pandemic fueled some of that growth.
Volume in FY 22 was off the charts great,” she said. “When you guys couldn’t buy anything on the service side of the economy, or experience a vacation or go out to dinner, you bought stuff. You bought a lot of stuff. You actually bought stuff you would have bought in ‘23 and we’re actually seeing that today.”
As containers accumulated at the port, each shipper paid rent for each unloaded container, which played a role in driving 2022’s great year, she said.
“When people dump their boxes at the port instead of taking them inland, like they needed to be doing, we had to charge for that space. That’s not what we do, we move boxes,” Melvin said.
While other ports only became more congested as the boxes stacked up, Charleston took advantage of the state’s inland ports to store the boxes.
“The great news for us is we had built two inland ports, one right here in the Pee Dee, and we were able to send those boxes inland to a facility where we could ground the boxes and stack them. That’s one reason we got out of the congestion issues a lot of ports struggled to overcome.”
Because of that buying surge in 2022, port traffic and port revenue are both projected to be down year over year in 2023, she said.
“You would think that with volume being down, I’d be a little depressed but, guess what, I’m not,” Melvin said. “We are a long cycle business. One year, two years, a pandemic, an anomaly, none of that should throw you off your strategy when you talk infrastructure.”
And, she said, infrastructure is what the state ports are all about.
“We have deployed about $3 billion in capital over the last six years and have another $8 billion to go to build,” she said.
Charleston’s port has plans to implement barge transportation between terminals to keep trucks off the roads and will also build a multi-modal rail terminal to be served by both CSX and Norfolk-Southern railroads.
That rail service has attracted business that counts on the port’s ability to move their cargo reliably to its final destination whether it’s in Virginia or the Midwest, she said.
The port also took steps to improve what many ports consider to be a utility into a competitive advantage — trailer chassis.
“We have launched our own chassis pool. During the pandemic it became abundantly clear there were not enough chassis in the U.S. to move all the boxes,” Melvin said
The port now has a $217 million pool of safe and with trailer chassis with radial tires, anti-lock breaks and led lights.
Charleston will also continue to pursue retail traffic to go with its manufacturing traffic, something it has succeeded at already with both Walmart and Target — the nation’s two largest retain importers — established at the port.
Melvin said the growth will only continue with already $5 billion in economic development announcements in the state this year and it’s only March.
