Fewer Ships and More Cargo Movement

For John, BLUF:  International trade is growing and this is helping to raise the poorest into better standards of living.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Colombo, Sri Lanka, is getting a new super port, made possible by investments from China.  Here, at The Maritime Executive, is a discussion of the port, and what the developers learned from what we do here in the United States, including in the Port of New Orleans.

The closest ports extend from around India and northeast to Bangladesh.  The option to send containers via super carriers at Colombo offers more cost-competitive transportation service to Indian exporters and importers.  Colombo’s port duplicates some logistics of the Port of New Orleans where oceanic carriers interline with barges that sail on the American inland waterway system.  Research undertaken by Applied Economic professor, Dr Jerry Fruin at the University of Minnesota and also the Smart Barge group showed that a barge carrying 72-containers to be cost competitive against railway and trucks on the link between Baton Rouge and Pittsburgh.

The voyage between Baton Rouge and Pittsburgh also involved the barge having to transit through 21-navigation locks and pay a fee.  Tug-barges built with ‘unrestricted’ ocean-capable hulls carry containers between the Port of New Orleans and Caribbean ports that include Kingston, Jamaica and extending as far as Port of Spain, Trinidad, the maximum viable/competitive sailing distance for tug-barges.  Many of the ocean-capable barges are built to lengths of 400 to 450-feet, and widths (beams) of 50 to as much as 90-feet and can carry anywhere from 54 to 110 x 40-ft containers, or 108 to 220-TEU’s on a single level.

A TEU is a unit of measure of cargo capacity and spelled out is Twenty-foot Equivalent Units.  It is based upon the twenty foot long Intermodal Container.  That means it can go by truck, train or ship.

This new port in Sri Lanka, along with the widening of the Panama Canal, and accompanying expansion of ports along the Eastern Seaboard are indications of cheaper costs of transportation, opening up more international trade.  First semester Econ tells us that trade makes everyone better off.

Regards  —  Cliff