Posted on December 19, 2017
By David Wren, The Post and Courier
The amount of containerized goods moving through the Port of Charleston continues to outpace last year’s record-breaking total despite a seasonal slowdown in November, the State Ports Authority said Friday.
A total of 92,329 containers moved through the port’s terminals last month — about 6.7 percent fewer than a year ago. The authority said the containers were split about evenly between import and export cargo.
“November volumes were moderate, as is seasonally typical for our port,” said Jim Newsome, the SPA’s president and CEO.
Despite the one-month dip, the Charleston-based maritime agency remains on pace to set another cargo record for its current fiscal year and finish 2017 with a double-digit increase. The SPA has set all-time-high marks in nine of the first 11 months of the calendar year.
For fiscal 2018, which started July 1, the SPA has handled 502,063 cargo boxes at its container terminals in North Charleston and Mount Pleasant. That is 2.9 percent better than the first five months of the previous fiscal year.
Measured another way, the SPA has handled the equivalent of 886,414 20-foot-long cargo containers this fiscal year. Volume based on that standard industry metric is up 2.5 percent.
“We’re seeing incredible big ship deployments,” Newsome said, referring to a new service that’s bringing ships capable of carrying 14,000 cargo containers from Asia to Charleston and other East Coast ports. That service alone has accounted for about 10 percent of all containerized cargo this fiscal year.
The SPA’s inland port in Greer handled 7,308 cargo containers moved between trucks and trains in November. Cargo moves at the inland port are up 10.2 percent during the first five months of the current fiscal year.
The Port of Charleston also handled 60,386 tons of breakbulk cargo including 18,202 vehicles, most of them BMW automobiles built in Greer and exported to markets worldwide.
Newsome said the SPA is focusing on completion of its second inland port, scheduled to open in Dillon next spring, and continued construction of a new headquarters building in Mount Pleasant during the coming year. The new headquarters, to be located at the Wando Welch Terminal, will replace aging office space on Concord Street. A Los Angeles developer plans to build a luxury hotel at that site along Charleston Harbor.
Also, a dredging project to deepen the harbor to 52 feet — giving the Port of Charleston the East Coast’s deepest waterway — will start in February.
Source: The Post and Courier
