Container cargo service in Portland Harbor has been suspended, raising questions about the future of the city’s International Marine Terminal and its container-handling operation.
Columbia Coastal Transport of Liberty Corner, N.J., stopped barge service out of Portland on June 29 after the loss of a key customer, Red Shield Environmental LLC, an Old Town pulp and energy company. Red Shield filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and is trying to reorganize its finances and resume operations.
Columbia Coastal’s decision forced the marine terminal operation to close down at the end of last week, affecting four full-time and 16 part-time workers.
Red Shield used the Columbia Coastal barge to ship 10,000 metric tons of wood pulp each month. The pulp was carried by rail to Sprague Energy, packed into containers at a Sprague facility in Portland and shipped out of the marine terminal by barge to the Port of New York/New Jersey. There, the containers were loaded onto ships bound for Europe and Asia.
Kevin Mack, Columbia Coastal spokesman, said that without Red Shield, the biweekly barge service was no longer viable. “There is not enough to pick up right now,” he said.
Mack said that if Red Shield manages to resume its operations, the service would return. The company also is working on ideas to create more business in Portland. “But it takes time,” he said.
The suspension of service clouds the future of the city-owned marine terminal on Commercial Street, the only facility in Maine to offer container handling. The city has been in talks with the Maine Port Authority to take over management of the terminal, which needs $8 million to $10 million in repairs that City Manager Joseph Gray says the city cannot afford.
Executive Director John Henshaw said the Maine Port Authority would no longer be interested in a deal without the container barge service.
“Obviously, we would look to (manage the terminal) as a service to Maine companies, but we want to realize revenues,” Henshaw said. He said he remains optimistic the service will resume.
Mack said that most Columbia Coastal customers are using trucks to ship their goods right now. Officials at Sappi Fine Paper in Westbrook, the second-largest customer of the service, were unavailable for comment. Mack declined to identify other customers, saying that information is proprietary.
Six months ago, the cargo business in Portland looked promising. Henshaw said that before the barge service was suspended, there had been hopes that it would soon become weekly. Columbia Coastal started the service last August, and by the end of the year the number of cargo containers leaving the port had almost doubled from the year before, from 2,218 in 2006 to 4,077 in 2007.
About 80 percent of the containers were moved by Columbia Coastal. A weekly container ship to Halifax, Nova Scotia, owned by Icelandic transportation company Eimskip, picked up the rest. But that service stopped in December after the company got into financial difficulties, said Jack Humeniuk, business agent for the longshoreman’s union, which staffed the International Marine Terminal.
Manufacturers are facing soaring fuel and transportation costs, Henshaw noted. Shipping by sea is much more efficient and cheaper than shipping by trucks or railways.
Although Henshaw is optimistic about the market for container service in the future, he said it takes time for businesses to change the way have been operating.Staff Writer Beth Quimby can be contacted at 791-6363 or at:
bquimby@pressherald.com
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