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The
earlier establishment of big warehouse clusters
for the sake of the then burgeoning Panama
Canal trade is still known as the "four
corners concept", that is having clusters
of big box retailer distribution centres
at the four corners of America with good
road and rail connectivity.
While
designed to accommodate the US east coast
Panama trade, it worked just as well for
the interloping Suez volumes, which came
into its own in the last two years.
One
brake on 18,000-TEU friendly Suez is that
most major container ports of the United
States, despite today's frenzied cries for
dredging, are too shallow to accommodate
the big ships. Even the dredging contemplated
is only aimed at diverting smaller ships,
considered big seven years ago, from the
US west coast, whose cargo might well be
transshipped at deep water Kingston, Jamaica,
onto smaller ships that they can access
shallower ports from Houston to Boston.
Against
this, it stands the Suez route, where US
east coast-bound Asian cargo can be dropped
off at Jeddah, Malta, Tangiers and Algeciras
to name a few transshipment points through
a process called "wayporting,"
whereby cargo is transferred from big to
smaller ships, which can cross the Atlantic
to access even deeply inland river ports
like Montreal, 1,000 miles from the sea,
but still a gateway to affluent, densely
populated central Canada, upstate New York
and Ohio. Meanwhile the monster ships continue
on to deep water northern Europe.
Given
the economics of the uncompleted and behind-schedule
Panama Canal expansion, the shift to long-way-round
Suez has been considerable with the world's
biggest container shipping line Maersk dropping
the Central American waterway in favour
of Suez.
Lately,
there has even been talk of making deep
water ports of Nova Scotia in eastern Canada
mega hubs for mega ships that cannot access
major US ports, turning places like New
York, Philadelphia and Baltimore into spokes
of feeder services.
The
Panama Canal's planning chief Mr Sabonge
remains confident that much of the diverted
traffic is recoverable once the expansion
is complete in 2015. Even Maersk's North
American vice president Timothy O'Connell
concedes the point.
"You
may see some services move back over to
the Panama and I think that may happen,
but that is a cost play," said Mr O'Connell.
Even
so, shippers at the South Carolina conference
wanting to get cargo to retail shelves far
inland, think much of this talk is beside
the point. "I hear a lot about dredging
but I don't hear a ton about the rest of
the infrastructure we need to improve,"
said Eric Sherman, vice president of imports
for Family Dollar.
But
that's another story.
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