April 22, 2024 | Page 19

International Maritime

Baltimore sole bright spot in broad trans-Pacific import decline

Annual containerized imports from Asia among top 10 US ports , in laden TEUs , with year-over-year change

Los Angeles

Long Beach NY-NJ

Savannah Houston

Los Angeles NSA

Virginia

Oakland Charleston Baltimore

Source : S & P Global

13.8 %

-11.2 %

-14.2 %

-14.1 %

-1.5 %

-17.6 %

-20.8 %

-19 %

-9.1 %

-16 %

0 1,000,000 2,000,000 L 3,000,000 4,000,000 4,484,402 2023 2022

can handle a 1,000-ton payload . The process will be even more time-consuming due to hazardous conditions in the water and onboard the Dali , with detailed planning needed for each phase of the removal .

“ This is a remarkably complex operation ,” Moore said during a March 29 press briefing . Seven floating cranes will be deployed for the recovery , along with ten tugboats , nine barges and eight salvage vessels , he added .

Ahead of the full reopening , USACE will open a 35-foot-deep channel by the end of April that will support one-way vessel traffic into Baltimore harbor and allow for the resumption of a container-on-barge service to and from the Port of Virginia and some ro / ro vessel calls .

Officials at the nearby ports of New York and New Jersey , Philadelphia and Virginia say they don ’ t expect any significant impact to vessel operations , primarily because most of the services that call Baltimore already call at one or more of those gateways . Still , with roughly 80 % of Baltimore-bound container freight diverted to New York – New Jersey and Virginia since the closure , according to supply chain visibility platform project44 , terminals in those ports have extended their gate hours to maintain fluidity .

In addition , CSX in early April started a daily north – south service to bring containers from New York – New Jersey and its Kearny , NJ , intermodal terminal to Seagirt for local pickup and match back empties for the return trip .

email : michael . angell @ spglobal . com the US West and East coasts declined in February . According to Sea-Intelligence ’ s Global Liner Performance Report , schedule reliability from Asia to the US West Coast fell to 44.2 % from 48.5 % in January , while Asia – US East Coast on-time performance slipped to 33.4 % from 33.9 %. Globally , schedule reliability improved marginally , rising to 53.3 % from 51.6 %.

Carriers plan to deploy a massive amount of capacity in the Asia – US trades in May : 2.69 million TEUs . That is up from 2.58 million TEUs in May 2023 and the largest amount of deployed capacity since October 2022 , during the height of the pandemic-induced import boom , according to Sea-Intelligence .

US imports from Asia surged 18.1 % year over year in January and 39.7 % in February , according to PIERS , a sister product of the Journal of Commerce within S & P Global . The National Retail Federation in March raised its projections for imports every month through July based on strong retail sales and a growing economy . S & P Global , parent company of the Journal of Commerce , has expanded its forecast for GDP growth in 2024 to 2.4 % from its earlier projection of 1.7 %.

email : bill . mongelluzzo @ spglobal . com

Sheila Fitzgerald / Shutterstock . com

Ocean carriers pulling back on Asia-US blank sailings

Asia – North America deployed capacity and capacity removed via blank sailings , actual and forecast , as of March 27 , 2024

2,500,000

TEU capacity

2,000,000

1,500,000 1,000,000

1,000,000

500,000

0
Sep-2021	Apr-2022	Nov-2022L	Jun-2023	Jan-2024

Deployed capacity Blanked capacity