The St. Lawrence Sea­way opened two weeks ear­li­er this ship­ping sea­son and U.S. ports took advan­tage of the warm weath­er to move car­go for their customers.

Bet­ty Sut­ton, Admin­is­tra­tor of the U.S. Saint Lawrence Sea­way Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion said, “Dur­ing the first nine weeks of the 2016 nav­i­ga­tion sea­son, ships arrived from 30 coun­tries and deliv­ered high val­ue car­go that sup­port­ed a wide range of man­u­fac­tur­ing. Our long­shore­men worked dili­gent­ly to offload car­go ships deliv­er­ing trans­form­ers bound for elec­tric pow­er com­pa­nies, tanks for beer brew­ing com­pa­nies, wind­mills for pow­er gen­er­a­tion, dock­side cranes for offload­ing ships, and kaolin for the man­u­fac­tur­ing of paper. With the 58th nav­i­ga­tion sea­son well under­way we are excit­ed about the strong mix of car­goes that have moved through the U.S. Sea­way locks.”

“The array of sal­ties at our Clure Ter­mi­nal this spring reflects the ver­sa­til­i­ty and vital­i­ty of the Great Lakes-Sea­way Sys­tem,” said Van­ta Coda, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Duluth Sea­way Port Author­i­ty. “We’ve already han­dled heavy-lift oil and gas refin­ery equip­ment for a project in Mon­tana; a load of kaolin clay from Brazil to sup­ply Min­neso­ta paper mills; and a ship­ment of 62-meter (203-foot) wind tur­bine blades for a wind ener­gy project in Iowa. Two addi­tion­al ships are en route with tow­er sec­tions and nacelles and hubs for that same project. Mak­ing these vital con­nec­tions to the heart­land of North Amer­i­ca is pre­cise­ly why we mar­ket our ser­vices as Duluth Car­go Connect.”

“Dur­ing the month of May the Port of Oswego received three ship­ments of alu­minum total­ing 9,079 met­ric tons, which was deliv­ered to us on the Alou­ette Spir­it and Evans Spir­it,” said Zelko Kir­in­ci­ch, exec­u­tive direc­tor and CEO of the Port. “The Evans Spir­it is a shal­low draft ves­sel with two car­go holds that have a pass-pass load­ing and dis­charge arrange­ment. This is the first time the Evans Spir­it has been to the Port of Oswego with its new load­ing and dis­charge sys­tem. We have a year-to-date total of 19,507 met­ric tons of alu­minum; which an increase of 86 per­cent over this time last year. In addi­tion to the alu­minum ship­ments we have received 8,802 met­ric tons of potash from Thun­der Bay and 11,400 met­ric tons of corn from Hamil­ton. We are excit­ed to have had a very busy start to the ship­ping sea­son and are look­ing for­ward to an even busier year ahead with both inbound and out­bound cargo.”

“May was a busy month at the Port of Indi­ana-Burns Har­bor with 15 inter­na­tion­al ships,” said Port Direc­tor Rick Heimann. “Ship­ments includ­ed Euro­pean beer fer­men­ta­tion tanks as well as organ­ic corn and soy­beans to be used for spe­cial­ty ani­mal feeds in U.S. farms. Since 2014, the port has han­dled over 80 beer tanks for craft brew­eries around the Mid­west with most of those going to Lagu­ni­tas Brew­ing Co. in Chicago.”

“Steel has arrived at a steady pace for region­al man­u­fac­tur­ers, match­ing last year’s strong vol­umes” said Paul Vorn­holt, port direc­tor of the Port of Mil­wau­kee. “The first part of the 2016 ship­ping sea­son has also brought steady saltie traf­fic to the largest grain silos at the Port.”

“The Port of Cleve­land is cur­rent­ly lag­ging slight­ly behind 2015 ton­nage num­bers at the start of our sea­son for our tra­di­tion­al non-con­tainer­ized steel busi­ness line,” stat­ed David Gutheil, vice pres­i­dent mar­itime and logis­tics. “We are opti­mistic that our num­bers will increase mov­ing into the sum­mer months and that the growth we have expe­ri­enced since 2009 will con­tin­ue. The Cleve­land-Europe Express con­tin­ues to attract new cus­tomers, as evi­denced by our recent part­ner­ship announce­ment with Lubri­zol for export con­tain­er busi­ness to Europe. We also moved our first car­go to the coun­try of Geor­gia, a 100-ton trans­former from Siemens Ener­gy in Mt. Ver­non, OH. In order to keep with our grow­ing demand for car­go, the Port and our ter­mi­nal oper­a­tors con­tin­ue to invest in infra­struc­ture and equip­ment. The Port com­mis­sioned two new Lieb­herr 280 mobile har­bor cranes in May, which will sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase the speed and effi­cien­cy of our oper­a­tion. Our new 21,000 square foot ware­house will be ready for use in late June, and will enable us to pro­vide transload­ing ser­vices and addi­tion­al stor­age capac­i­ty. We are also pleased that Fed­er­al Marine Ter­mi­nals has ordered a 2016 Kobel­co Hydraulic Crawler Crane with 275-ton capac­i­ty. The new crane is expect­ed to arrive at the Port in Sep­tem­ber and will enhance their abil­i­ty to han­dle large and com­plex project cargoes.”

The St. Lawrence Sea­way report­ed that year-to-date car­go ship­ments for the peri­od March 21 to May 31 were 6.5 mil­lion met­ric tons, down 4.15 per­cent over the same peri­od in 2015. The dry bulk cat­e­go­ry was up near­ly 5 per­cent with salt, potash and gyp­sum in the pos­i­tive col­umn at 25, 35, and 108 per­cent respec­tive­ly. Iron ore was down 9 per­cent; coal was down almost 1 per­cent. While steel prod­ucts were down 23 per­cent, oth­er gen­er­al car­go was up 113 percent.

About

The Great Lakes Sea­way Part­ner­ship is a coali­tion of lead­ing U.S. and Cana­di­an mar­itime orga­ni­za­tions work­ing to enhance pub­lic under­stand­ing of the ben­e­fits of marine trans­porta­tion. Learn more at www.greatlakesseaway.org