Port of Montreal H1 container throughput drops by 14.6 percent

Container cargo dropped by 14.6 percent at the Port of Montreal during the first half of this year, compared with the same period last year, largely because of the continuing American and Canadian manufacturing slumps.

Containers handled dropped by 105,562 20-foot equivalent units or by 14.6 percent to 619,721 TEUs from 725,283 in the 2008 period, the Montreal Port Authority reported Wednesday. Inbound TEUs were down 10.6 percent and outbound were down18 percent.
By tonnage, the container decline was 18.4 percent overall, to 5.5 million metric tons, with inbound and outbound cargoes declining at about the same rate.

Dry bulk cargo was another main problem, down 24.1 percent year-over-year, to 1.8 million metric tons from 2.4 million. Sylvie Vachon, president and CEO of the Montreal Port Authority, said container declines and dry bulk declines such as in iron, zinc and copper "are due to difficulties in the manufacturing sectors of Ontario (the key industrial province) and the American Midwest."

The Montreal results were helped by strong grain exports, which rose by 13 percent over the period last year, to 1,203,766 metric tonnes from 1,064,000. Strong grain harvests last year in the United States and Canada led to just over 60 percent of the grain handled at Montreal arriving there from U.S. and Canadian Great Lakes ports, while about 30 percent came by train and the rest by truck. The grain coming from Great Lakes ports was up 31.1 percent from the period last year.

President Vachon said Port Montreal’s container performance was also helped this year by diversification of container traffic further into the Mediterranean region, which showed a 22.2 percent rise over the first half of 2008.

Source: http://www.joc.com