NYK: Low productivity, high fees put west coast cargo at risk

US west coast ports, chiefly Los Angeles-Long Beach, are being urged to improve productivity or risk losing further market share to ports in Canada and the US east coast, a Cargo Business News conference was told.

Bill Payne, executive vice president and chief operating officer at NYK Line North America, said 10 years ago container moves per hour on NYK vessels were about equal in the ports of New York-New Jersey and Los Angeles-Long Beach.

NYK ships and their vessel-sharing partners receive at least six more container moves per hour per crane in New York-New Jersey than in southern California. According to Mr Payne that translates into savings of US$15 per box, $75,000 per call and $4 million a year.

Another problem is "unpopular" container fees in southern California, said conference delegates, who held that shippers believe they get more value for money at Canadian and US east coast ports.

"Organised labour on the west coast is perceived as unreliable and unpredictable," Jon DeCesare, chief executive of World Class Logistics Consulting in Long Beach, told the Port Productivity Conference.

Mr DeCesare also said the way LA and Long Beach handled their clean-trucks programme was a "big mistake" because they did not seek the views of the shipper community.

He also maintained that a rapid increase in the number of fees and a push by the Port of Los Angeles to ban all but employee truck drivers as part of the clean-truck plan was also causing a diversion of cargo.

(Source: www.schednet.com)