“Novem­ber was a good month for the export of agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts and ship­ments of alu­minum ingots on the Great Lakes/Seaway sys­tem,” said Bet­ty Sut­ton, Admin­is­tra­tor of the U.S. Saint Lawrence Sea­way Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion. “Under the bina­tion­al trade devel­op­ment pro­gram known as High­way H2O, the U.S. and Cana­di­an Sea­way cor­po­ra­tions have raised inter­na­tion­al aware­ness about the advan­tages of export­ing grain prod­ucts via the Great Lakes/Seaway sys­tem and it is pay­ing off.”
Sut­ton added, “The U.S. Great Lakes ports of Tole­do, Ohio; Duluth, Min­neso­ta; Burns Har­bor, Indi­ana; and Mil­wau­kee, Wis­con­sin han­dled corn, soy­beans and wheat exports bound for Europe, South Amer­i­ca and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. Addi­tion­al­ly, alu­minum ingots arrived at the ports of Oswego, New York and Tole­do bound for local man­u­fac­tur­ers sup­port­ing the auto­mo­bile indus­try. With the cur­rent pace of both com­modi­ties, I antic­i­pate a strong fin­ish to the Sea­way system’s 2016 nav­i­ga­tion season.”
Through Novem­ber, the Port of Tole­do has seen a con­sid­er­able increase in coal, petro­le­um and gen­er­al car­go ship­ments over the 2015 year-to-date totals. Gen­er­al car­go ship­ments were main­ly com­posed of steel, project car­go, super sacks of var­i­ous bulk mate­ri­als and aluminum.
“2016 will be a record-break­ing year for alu­minum vol­umes through Tole­do,” said Joe Cap­pel, Vice Pres­i­dent of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment for the Tole­do-Lucas Coun­ty Port Author­i­ty. “We thought that 2015 was a great year for alu­minum and we have now exceed­ed those vol­umes by over 40 per­cent. The alu­minum arrives from east­ern Cana­da by water and feeds the man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­try in this region. The Port of Tole­do plays a crit­i­cal role in this mas­sive sup­ply chain and we have capac­i­ty to han­dle even more.”
In ear­ly Novem­ber, the Spli­ethoff Lines ves­sel, M/V Mars­gracht, called at the Port of Mon­roe to load emp­ty con­tain­ers which had been col­lect­ed through­out the sea­son from around the Great Lakes region. Ear­li­er in the year, in prepa­ra­tion for future con­tain­er activ­i­ties planned for 2017, the port’s ter­mi­nal oper­a­tor, DRM Ter­mi­nal Ser­vices, invest­ed in reach-stack­ers, con­tain­er trail­ers and oth­er nec­es­sary equip­ment to han­dle con­tainer­ized car­go in high vol­ume. The 130 con­tain­ers loaded in Novem­ber rep­re­sent the largest sin­gle load vol­ume han­dled by any port in recent years except for Cleveland.
Port Direc­tor Paul LaMarre said, “This con­tain­er han­dling evo­lu­tion was an enor­mous suc­cess for the Port of Mon­roe and DRM Ter­mi­nal Ser­vices. Whether loaded or emp­ty, these con­tain­ers rep­re­sent­ed increased activ­i­ty across our docks and proved that the Port of Mon­roe is strate­gi­cal­ly posi­tioned and high­ly capa­ble to han­dle increased vol­ume next season.”
Novem­ber Sea­way car­goes at the Port of Indi­ana-Burns Har­bor were the high­est for any sin­gle month with­in the last five years.
“We had a sig­nif­i­cant increase in ocean ship­ments this past month—up 50 per­cent from last Novem­ber and over 80 per­cent from the pre­vi­ous month,” said Port Direc­tor Rick Heimann. “This includ­ed steel-relat­ed prod­ucts for Mid­west man­u­fac­tur­ers and raw mate­ri­als for the steel indus­try as well as two ships loaded with over 45,000 tons of Indi­ana grain bound for world mar­kets. The port’s abil­i­ty to han­dle glob­al ship­ments also cre­ates advan­tages for mov­ing large-dimen­sion­al ship­ments by water into the heart of the Mid­west. Our Novem­ber car­goes includ­ed sev­er­al 200-foot molds for wind tur­bine blades, a com­pet­i­tive sail­ing yacht for an upcom­ing boat show and two 10-ton freez­ers for an Indi­ana food processor.”
“In com­pil­ing ton­nage totals for Novem­ber, it was heart­en­ing for us here at the Head of the Lakes to final­ly see an uptick in iron ore ship­ments,” said Van­ta Coda, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Duluth Sea­way Port Author­i­ty. “We all know it’s been a slow, painful climb out of last year’s min­ing indus­try down­turn. See­ing pel­lets pick up pace through the Port of Duluth-Supe­ri­or is encour­ag­ing. The steady stream of grain ship­ments con­tin­ues, as well—up near­ly 25 per­cent over the port’s five-year year-to-date aver­age. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, with the increase in out­bound ship­ments of iron ore and grain, the num­ber of ves­sel vis­its by Cana­di­an lak­ers is up 15 per­cent this year.”
Port of Oswego Exec­u­tive Direc­tor and CEO, Zelko Kir­in­ci­ch said the port had a busy month of November.
“Near­ly 4,000 met­ric tons of alu­minum shipped into the port in two ship­ments from Sept-Iles, Que­bec, Cana­da,” he said. “The alu­minum was deliv­ered to the local Nov­el­is Plant which makes the alu­minum sheets used in the assem­bly of the Ford F‑150 trucks, as well as for oth­er uses. We antic­i­pate a strong close to the 2016 ship­ping season.”
The St. Lawrence Sea­way report­ed that year-to-date car­go ship­ments for the peri­od March 21 to Novem­ber 30 were 30.3 mil­lion met­ric tons, down 5.89 per­cent over the same peri­od in 2015. The dry bulk cat­e­go­ry was down 13 per­cent. Iron ore was down almost 11 per­cent; coal was down 18 per­cent. The gen­er­al car­go cat­e­go­ry was down 6 per­cent over­all, but with­in that clas­si­fi­ca­tion, project car­go post­ed a 42 per­cent increase. The liq­uid bulk cat­e­go­ry was at 19 per­cent over 2015.
Source: The Great Lakes Sea­way Part­ner­ship Decem­ber 19, 2016