Ports of the Americas

Special Report

temporary storage, which adds to all-in costs for customers, he noted.

Southern California terminals demonstrated they were able to implement such measures in the post-COVID cargo explosion in Southern California, Sisson said.“ For customers, it’ s handling slightly higher peaks that’ s a bit of a challenge,” he said.

Coping with an already stressed system

The arrival of megamax vessels to Long Beach comes as the trans-Pacific, the busiest US trade, suffers stress from typhoons in China that resulted in skipped calls and vessel delays, an unusually strong El Niño condition that has prompted draft restrictions at the Panama Canal and could mean volume diversions to the West Coast, and vessel and equipment dislocations caused by the war in the Middle East. Those conditions can be magnified by weekly megamax cargo surges, according to Smith.

“ These big ship arrivals take more slack out of the system.”

“ Anything to create more slack when the system is stressed is needed,” he said.“ One thing these big ship arrivals do is they take more slack out of the system. When you’ re running anywhere near capacity, anything that happens becomes magnified by these bigger ships.”

On the other hand, eliminating the call in Oakland for the Sentosa service means MSC is reducing the complexity of working the vessels. Since there will be no Oakland containers, stowage at the Asian ports will be easier, as will the discharge of the containers in Long Beach.

“ There is no rehandling of containers and no re-stows,” Smith said.

email: bill. mongelluzzo @ spglobal. com

Long Beach imports from Asia tick up 2.5 % through August

Containerized imports from Asia among the top 10 US ports, Jan.-Aug., in laden TEUs, with year-over-year change Los Angeles

Long Beach NY-NJ

Savannah Houston

Los Angeles NSA

Oakland

Virginia Charleston Baltimore

Source: PIERS, S & P Global

0.2 %

-3 %

1.6 %

-6.4 %

-14.1 %

11.7 %

4.5 %

3.2 %

0 1,000,000 1,088,388 00,000 2,000,000 L 3,000,000

2026 2025

2.5 %

4 %

© 2026 S & P Global

L

New services upend Chilean fruit delivery to US East Coast

By Richard Bright

With less than three months until the Chilean table grape season, two developments may, in combination, change the way Chilean fruit is supplied to the US eastern seaboard.

Container carrier Seaboard Marine plans to extend its west coast South America service southward into Chile and discharge at Gloucester, New Jersey. At the same time, specialized reefer operator Seatrade is moving its Chilean reefer service from Wilmington, Delaware, to Gloucester as well. Fumigation will be decisive in determining which mode carries what volumes to which terminal.

Most Chilean table grapes( with some berries and stone fruit) bound for the US East Coast are shipped on specialized reefer vessels operated by Cool Carriers and Seatrade, which discharge along the Delaware River at Gloucester and Wilmington, respectively. Of the container carriers shipping the minority, Mediterranean Shipping Co. has the largest share and discharges at Packer Avenue, the river’ s largest container terminal at the Port of Philadelphia.

The trade has historically favored the specialized mode, partly because of the lack of supply chain infrastructure in Chile and partly because the berthside cold storage at Wilmington and Gloucester acts as fumigation chambers. All Chilean table grapes must be fumigated with methyl bromide before release into the market. Packer Avenue’ s own fumigation capacity is often overwhelmed during peak arrivals, and the overspill is trucked across the river to Holt Logistics, which operates Gloucester Marine Terminal, as space allows.

Beyond peak-season bottlenecks, pressures for change include rising, earlier-arriving Peruvian volumes, falling volumes at Wilmington and Holt’ s investment in hinterland cold storage. Maersk, meanwhile, will hope to grow the one-stop-shop service it launched this year with Oppenheimer( Oppy) at Wilmington, North Carolina.

Holt Logistics, which already hosts Cool Carriers’ Chilean service, Seatrade’ s South African citrus and Del Monte’ s weekly Central American service, is not short of reefer capacity. Its 123.6-acre Gloucester site holds 50,000 pallets in 25 million cubic feet( MMcf) of refrigerated storage, with 2,500 reefer plugs, and Holt has a further 29 MMcf across its Pier 8 & 9 and Delaware Avenue warehouses.

Wilmington, the largest banana port in the US, has 20 MMcf of cold storage, 2,030 reefer plugs and a license to fumigate, but a checkered recent history. Gulftainer took a 50-year concession in 2018, promising up to $ 600 million of investment including a container terminal at Edgemoor, but failed to secure financing and fell into debt.

38 Journal of Commerce | October 5, 2026 www. joc. com