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Barge
services have been operating from and to
Portland for over 20 years. Through these
services the port has been able to connect
producers throughout eastern Oregon, Washington
State and western Idaho to the wider world,
allowing them to compete in the global marketplace.
While
the services may be nothing new, they are
certainly growing in popularity, particularly
due to the cost savings benefits they offer.
These
benefits of Portland's barge services have
apparently been enough to convert the likes
of global fast food chain, McDonald's, whose
popular chain of stores in Hong Kong sells
french-fries sourced from the Portland hinterland.
"If
you go to a McDonald's in Hong Kong and
have french-fries, then I can guarantee
you that they are grown in the state of
Oregon, produced, frozen, put in a refrigerated
container, sent down the river on a barge
and shipped to Hong Kong," Mr Wyatt
said.
Calbee,
a major Japanese snack producer, also takes
advantage of Portland's barge services.
Dairy
product producers also extensively use the
port's barge services to export their goods
out to Asia, which they can do at a reduced
cost when compared with other options, such
as trucking.
"If
the french-fry producer in eastern Oregon
had to truck that product to Seattle or
Tacoma, the additional truck cost would
be about US$700, $800, maybe even $1,000
[per FEU] more than the barge move. That's
approaching the cost of ocean transportation
from Portland to Shanghai on the export
leg," Mr Wyatt said.
The
growth potential of US exports is now beginning
to trigger interest among the shipping lines
as well, the senior port executive said.
"The
CKYH [Cosco, K Line, Yang Ming, Hanjin]
are a dominant customer in our market. They
know our export market well and for a long
time they didn't find it particularly attractive,
simply because the import leg was much more
remunerative to them. They were making up
to five times more revenue on the imports
than on their exports.
"But
that is now changing. I think that the import
leg is now about 2:1 in revenue for them,
and even now that is shifting and exports
are becoming more important," Mr Wyatt
said.
This
change has resulted in the carrier group
now talking more to the Port of Portland
about adjusting their services to complement
the export volumes that are available from
the port.
"The
fact that they can obtain west coast cargo
after having discharged their eastbound
freight and then immediately put that container
back onto the barge service for that westbound
load just further demonstrates how the carriers
can operate in Portland and accomplish their
logistics goals on a lower-cost basis than
in other gateways," Port of Portland
senior manager for marine and trade development,
Greg Borossay said.
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