Box trade to brighten for Mobile, Gulfport after 2010

MOBILE and Gulfport container terminals on the US Gulf Coast handled a combined 161,000 TEU in 2009, far less than the mighty US West Coast ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach that together handled 6.7 million TEU last year, according to Zepol Corporation, a Minnesota-based company that specialises in tracking trade activity.

The result made Mobile the 26th top container destination in the US, based on throughput volume, in 2009.

But trade patterns are expected to change once the expansion of the Panama Canal is completed in 2014, with Zepol marketing director Kevin Palmstein expecting the Gulf Coast to see more Asian traffic and attract more inbound containers, reports Mobile Alabama Press-Register.

"Ten years from now, I could see Mobile moving up significantly to among the biggest ports in the country," Mr Palmstein said. "It's all about how they compete with all the ports east of the Panama Canal."

In the meanwhile, Mr Palmstein expects container traffic to rebound, after 2010, on the back of recovery in the world economy.

The new US$300 million Mobile Container Terminal completed its first full year of operation in November 2009 at a time when "container volume, which had been expanding at double-digit annual rates since the early 1990s, went into a nosedive," the report added.

"We have to find out if that cost will undermine the concept."

(Source:www.schednet.com)