20 August 2009

Prince Rupert Container Volume Surges 124 Percent

The following is excerpted from the 19 August 2009 edition of "Journal of Commerce".

The Asia to Chicago and Memphis container traffic of the Port of Prince Rupert, British Columbia, and its sea and rail partners, is on an upswing other North American ports have yet to experience.

More shippers in Asia and in the U.S. Midwest and Canada are shifting their traffic to Prince Rupert, in northern British Columbia just south of Alaska, in these recessionary times, said Don Krusel, CEO of the Prince Rupert Port Authority...

“We expect this trend to continue regardless of the timing of any recovery in trans-Pacific volumes,” he said. “Of course when the lift does come, we expect Prince Rupert and the CKYH partners to be well positioned to capitalize on the lift with a significant service advantage,” he said.

The CKYH partners (China’s COSCO line with “K” line, Yang Ming and Hanjin Shipping), with their twice-weekly calls at Prince Rupert, carried 56,573 20-foot equivalent units between Asia and North America in the second quarter this year. That’s a 41 percent increase from the 40,043 TEUs in the first quarter this year. The 97,616 TEUs for the first half of the year surged 124 percent above the 43,555 TEUs for the 2008 period.

Canadian National Railway carries the containers between Prince Rupert and Canadian and U.S. destinations....

Current expansion plans for the port are still on, from 500,000 TEU capacity currently to 2 million annually. The Port expects environmental assessment processes to be completed and construction to begin in late 2010, with completion “around early 2014,” said Krusel.

The CKYH partnership which launched the port has not yet had annual rival lines, and none may be expected soon. CEO Krusel said, “We have been talking to many shipping lines expecting new or amendment deployments.

However, in this economic environment it is difficult to forecast when we might see additional services.” That day will come, he said, “sooner than later.”