ship backups under way at other east coast ports, the port of Wilmington hopes its high berth productivity will impress a market with long supply chain disruptions.
The Port of Wilmington in the United States is located on the southeast Atlantic coast of North Carolina in the east of the country. There are 8 grocery/bulk berths in the port, with a total length of about 1828.8 meters. Especially considering that it only handles about 15 percent of North Carolina's trade. Recent multiple distribution center announcements suggest that others agree to want Wilmington to demonstrate the potential of the East Coast container trade.
''There's a lot of cargo going through other ports that should go through our port in Wilmington, ''Brian Clark, executive director of the North Carolina Port Authority, told Business Magazine. "Historically, (North Carolina import and export) goods have been transported through other ports due to lack of services and capacity. Supply chains develop in other directions, not necessarily through Wilmington. So our focus is on reducing barriers.
"If the goods can be transported at a lower cost due to the short inland distance, this is a benefit for the shipper or BCO," Clark added. "This is our sales promotion, attracting service and quantity through the Port of Wilmington, not the supply chain that may exist today.
In December this year, Maersk announced plans to build a new refrigeration facility in Wilmington, USA, to supply temperature-controlled goods, which is scheduled to open in the third quarter of 2023.
According to Sea-Intelligence data, although North American West Coast port throughput began to contract significantly in the third quarter of 2022 (both year-on-year and annualized basis compared to 2019), this is not the case for North American East Coast ports.
the Danish Shipping Data Analysis Company report shows that although the east coast ports have declined slightly, the total throughput has shown a similar growth trend. Load exports also increased, with four consecutive months of year-on-year growth in September, indicating that shipping companies began to slightly clean up some load export backlogs.
Sea Intelligence also said that cargo traffic is likely to continue to shift from the west coast to the east coast ports. The throughput of the east coast and the west coast is almost the same. In the past 10 years, the throughput of North American west coast ports is much higher than that of the east coast ports.
the East Coast is the fastest growing range of North American ports, Clark hopes Wilmington has a chance to increase the number. The port offers seven services, including two trans-Pacific routes, but port calls were skipped this year due to congestion at other ports, which has suffered.