Miami River Marine Group announces new executive director
The board of directors of the Miami River Marine Group has retained marine industry veteran Rick Eyerdam to replace Dr. Francis Bohnsack as executive director of the not-for-profit, private maritime business organization.
“Dr. Bohnsack was offered a great opportunity to work in the Gateway program at the Maritime Administration and she enthusiastically recommended Rick Eyerdam to be her replacement,” said Richard Dubin, president of the Miami River Marine Group. “We agreed that Rick has the background and experience we need at this stage of our development as the Port of the Miami River.”
According to Chris Moore, the administrator of the Maritime Administration Gateway program, “We have a talented and knowledgeable staff in the field representing the agency and each of the programs at the Maritime Administration.”
Moore said, “Most of the Gateway directors work closely with the various program offices providing regional insight or getting detailed information to share with stakeholders. The Gateway offices provide a valuable resource to headquarters through their personal relationships with the maritime community and state and local leadership, at the grass roots level.”
Dr. Bohnsack’s Gateway region includes all of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Puerto Rico. She succeeds Lauren Kotas Brand who was promoted to a different position at the Maritime Administration.
For 16 years Dr. Bohnsack worked at the grass roots level organizing the maritime businesses along the Miami River into a coherent group with a coherent message in support of the advancement of the working waterfront.
The Miami River is the fifth largest port in the state of Florida, serving as economic catalyst for the South Florida region and providing vital shipping links to the shallow draft ports of the Caribbean and Central and South America. As a working river, the Miami River's navigation and commercial shipping directly generates millions of tons of cargo each year and thousands of direct and indirect jobs. Miami River cargo transshipment is estimated at $4 billion per year.
Unique among ports, the Miami River is banked by properties that lie within the boundaries of the City of Miami and Dade County at large. Thirty-two terminals, all privately owned, are located all along the river, but primarily concentrated in Dade County's westernmost navigable stretch of the channel. Vessels of smaller size than those calling upon the Port of Miami "ranging from 50 feet and less than 500 gross tons to 296 feet and as much as 2,566 gross tons " visit these terminals which create a special niche for the shallow draft cargo industry.
Through the leadership of Dr. Bohnsack and her board most of the marine terminals on the Miami River adopted the security procedures required by federal and international law after 9/11 so that they could continue their critically important mission providing logistics, food, equipment and household goods to the small, shallow draft ports of the Caribbean.
Dr. Bohnsack was also at the helm during the years’ long legal wrangling over the zoning of the riverfront. Over objections from some local business interests and officials a federal appeals court recently ruled in favor of the Port of the Miami River and against the efforts to replace marine and shipping businesses with high-end condominium developments.
The Miami River Groups’ Attorney Andrew Dickman, successfully filed suits against the City in 2004 and 2006 to stop three massive condo projects that would have eliminated nearly 25 acres of critical marine industrial lands on the River. The City responded by rewriting its policies, and the Miami Group appealed leading to the recent precedent-setting appellant decision.
In 2009 Rick Eyerdam closed the print edition of Florida Shipper Magazine on behalf of the Journal of Commerce. Since then he was been working as a maritime industry consultant and magazine writer for Latin Trade Magazine and Caribbean Maritime Magazine.
Eyerdam is an award winning editor, author and expert in business coverage, most recently international trade, ports, shipping, logistics and commerce; reporting for five years for the Journal of Commerce Shipper Group. He is on the steering committee of Sea Cargo Americas and Air Cargo Americas. He is an occasional panelist and moderator at maritime industry conferences relating to trade and maritime interests.
Eyerdam earned a bachelor's degree in English and in Government from Florida State University. He taught journalism at Florida International University. He held editorial roles with The Miami News, The Palm Beach Times, The Florida Keys Keynoter, Miami/South Florida Magazine, South Florida Business Journal, Southern Boating Magazine and the Marine Business Journal, the Boating News, Florida Shipper and Focus Magazine.
An avid boater and fisherman, Eyerdam is the founder and first president of the Florida Keys Artificial Reef Association.
Atlanta leaders push for deeper Savannah port. Yes inland Atlanta! Get the message?
Savannah politicians welcome the Figaro
Imagine if you will a day when Orlando’s top business and political leaders created a press event to demand that the federal government provide its share of funds to dredge the Port of Miami or Port Everglades or Jaxport.
In Florida where the major cargo ports are owned by competing, often petty county governments and operated like any other county agency, that kind of unified support for job-building infrastructure improvements can never happen, not until Florida changes to a state wide port authority.
The trivial competition is so bad here that last month the Port of Miami and Port Everglades staged competing first call events at the same time on the same weekend. In a more enlightened and mature setting, Port of Miami and Port Everglades might have seized the opportunity to raise awareness of the power of trade and the economic vitality that ports provide. This could have been accomplished by orchestrating two weeks of press coverage, including aerial images from already-in-place network cameras that were flying around before, during and after the local football games taking palm tree images.
The nation and state could have been made aware of the robustness of South Florida’s maritime industry and the need for deeper, more agile ports. This could have hapened in the context of a patriotic segment on the commissioning of a new destroyer, followed by the arrival of the world’s largest cruise ship, followed by the arrival of the largest container ship to call South Florida.
TV loves twitter-size messages and big ships gliding down narrow channels in the gleaming sun, make for a great set-up. Unfortunately nobody at Miami Dade County and certainly nobody at Broward County could see beyond the horizon. So the opportunity for millions of dollars of free insight was lost. Meanwhile, since local television and the newspapers all work for each other now, neither port got the kind of coverage it deserved. Nor did they get what they got in Savannah when CMA CGM pulled a similar publicity stunt, sending its massive Figaro up the shallow river.
Georgia is blessed with a statewide port authority which knits the state’s economic interest into a fabric it can wave like a flag, and so it did today.
According to the account in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Global trade proved one of the few bright spots for Georgia’s economy during the Great Recession. .But a high-powered coterie of Atlanta business and government leaders will warn Thursday that Georgia’s recovery could stall if the port of Savannah – the state’s import-export engine – isn’t deepened to attract the next generation of supersized container ships.”
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed joins Home Depot CEO Frank Blake and others Thursday at the World Congress Center to update the media and others on the consequences – Charleston, Jacksonville and other ports are also keen to expand ports – if Savannah fails to deepen its harbor and river.
“It is critical to maintain the competitive advantage that Savannah provides to Georgia and the region,” said Mark Holifield, the Home Depot executive in charge of logistics. For our customers, if trade (advantages) shift, we would have to re-evaluate our investments” by considering other ports.
Savannah is the nation’s fastest growing, and fourth largest, container port. Savannah, along with the commodity port in Brunswick, accounts for 129,000 full- and part-time jobs statewide and contributes $15.5 billion in personal income, according to the University of Georgia’s Selig Center.
In Georgia they understand that Atlanta, far inland, benefits mightily from the ports. Roughly $8 billion in cargo that passed through the two ports was produced, shipped or received across the 28-county metro Atlanta region during the last fiscal year, according to the Georgia Ports Authority. But Atlanta’s economy will suffer, port boosters say, without a deeper Savannah port.
The Army Corps of Engineers reported recently that Savannah’s river and harbor could be deepened to an economy-boosting 48 feet with minimal environmental impact. The cost, to be borne by Georgia and federal taxpayers: $551 million.
The Corps’ decade-long, $40 million study bolsters port boosters who say the deepening is critical for Georgia’s economic future, especially with larger container ships calling on East Coast ports by 2015.
Hurdles remain, though. Four federal agencies must approve the plan for dredging to begin by late 2012, and members of Congress and environmental groups could try to alter the project. Environmentalists worry that deepening the Savannah River will harm the region’s drinking water, endangered sturgeon, striped bass and life-sustaining marshes. South Carolina officials fear Savannah will steal business from Charleston and stymie the development of a planned port at Jasper.
The Panama Canal, through which 47 percent of cargo bound for and from Savannah passes, will complete an industry-transforming expansion by 2015. Shippers predict a 25 percent uptick in East Coast cargo traffic – more auto parts and electronics from China, for example – by larger container ships bypassing clogged West Coast ports.
That spawned Georgia’s push to deepen Savannah from 42 to 48 feet. Savannah’s port, according to the Nov. 16 report by the Corps, is the shallowest of the nation’s top 10 container ports. Charleston’s harbor, for example, is 45 feet deep.
The Corps estimates the cost of deepening a 35.6-mile stretch of Savannah harbor and river at $551 million. Washington would cover 70 percent of that amount. Georgia legislators have already set aside $102.3 million, less than half its share of the project.
If the harbor is deepened, the Ports Authority plans to double the amount of cargo Savannah can handle by 2020. It also expects to spend another $1.1 billion on cranes and rail yards to accommodate twice as many containers.
The Corps says a deeper Savannah port will add $100 million annually to the nation’s economy.
But South Carolina officials worry they’ll lose money if Savannah sucks up more East Coast trade.
“Folks in Charleston are always nervous about competition from anybody,” said Dean Moss, chairman of the Savannah River Maritime Commission, a South Carolina agency. “There’s also concern about the implications of deepening on the potential future South Carolina port in Jasper County. We believe that Jasper offers the greatest opportunity for ocean-going commerce in the Savannah area.”
South Carolina and Georgia have committed to jointly build a new port in Jasper County about 10 miles closer to the ocean than Savannah’s Garden City Terminal. Nobody, though, expects Jasper to get fully built before 2025 once Savannah and Charleston run out of terminal space.
Georgia may need South Carolina’s political support to wrest hundreds of millions of deepening dollars from Congress, especially with rising opposition to earmarks. U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, the Republican whose district includes Savannah, sent a letter to the White House in September requesting the president include deepening dollars in his budget so as to avoid congressional skirmishing over limited Corps’ funds. Georgia Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss, both Republicans, penned similar missives.
Money isn’t the only issue. Environmentalists aren’t convinced that a 48-foot shipping channel “can be mitigated to an acceptable level” as the Corps reported. Scientists with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the 3,200-acre Savannah National Wildlife Refuge across the river from the port, recommend a channel no deeper than 45 feet. At 48 feet, the refuge would lose more than 10 percent of “irreplaceable” freshwater tidal marsh.
The Corps plans to spend $200 million mitigating environmental damage if the harbor is deepened to 48 feet. Will Berson, interim director of the Georgia Conservancy’s coastal office, said that may not be enough money.
“What contingencies does the Corps have in case their modeling is wrong?” Berson asked. “Our concern has always been to have a refuge and a vibrant port. The Corps needs to make people feel confident that the environmental aspect of the deepening is being looked at as earnestly as the commercial.”
Curtis Foltz, the Port Authority’s executive director, envisions little environmental impact.
“Someone who makes statements that the project’s impacts haven’t been thoroughly analyzed and mitigation plans are not well thought-out is either not informed or has ill intents,” he said. “Anything short of 48 feet is something that we would be disappointed with. Ships aren’t getting any smaller. They’re only getting bigger.”
Waiting For Recovery
Rick Eyerdam | Dec 17, 2009 | Comments 0
MIAMI – Far-sighted investment decisions in Brazil, Colombia and Uruguay, made before the economic downturn in 2008 and subsequent drop in global trade, have set the stage for region-wide port and terminal expansion as the overhaul of the Panama Canal nears its 2014 completion date.
The canal expansion – which will alter the breadth and scope of sea trade in the hemisphere – is now entering its final stages. A consortium led by Spain’s Sacyr Vallehermoso and Impregilo of Italy submitted the winning $3.2 billion bid for new locks and the water-saving basins that will enable more and bigger ships to traverse the canal. Work is already underway throughout the Americas to make room for the larger vessels.
The hope is that the deeper ports, additional berths and streamlined maritime terminals will be ready when the volume of sea trade recovers. Total trade in Latin America and the Caribbean is projected to fall 13 percent in 2009, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, outstripping the expected 10 percent drop in global commerce.
Many of the current projects would be impossible to finance today. Port executives from Uruguay and Cartagena, Colombia, for example, borrowed funds in 2007, when lending terms were easy. That year was “the year of the ports,” said Maria Kang, managing director for global infrastructure finance at the Bank of Nova Scotia.
“Banks were tripping over each other to lend money for port projects,” Kang told a panel at the SeaCargo Americas Conference in Miami in November. “Most of the banks that participated in those transactions are very gun-shy about participating in port financing today.”
The decline in trade and stricter standards for infrastructure projects have shut out most port authorities from potential sources of new funding, thereby quashing ambitious plans.
Brazil is a notable exception. The country owes its enviable position to robust commodity exports that have helped strengthen its currency and boost its credit ratings, according to John Price, managing director, market intelligence services, for Kroll InfoAmericas.
DP World, the global port operator controlled by the government of Dubai, announced in August a partnership with Brazilian construction conglomerate, the Odebrecht Group, to acquire a majority stake in Empresa Brasileira de Terminais Portuários, or Embraport, Brazil’s largest private terminal operator.
The new stakeholders intend to proceed with an Embraport project to build a private container terminal and a liquid bulk terminal to offload ethanol in Santos, the port complex in the state of São Paulo that contains multiple facilities and is the country’s largest container port and the biggest port in Latin America. The first phase of the Embraport project is slated for completion in 2012 at a cost of $500 million. In its first year, the facility is projected to handle one million 20-foot containers – know as TEUs – as well as two billion liters of sugar cane ethanol.
Santos, the port serving the populous and prosperous state of São Paulo, is already a hotbed of activity. In addition to Embraport, Brasil Terminal Portuário (BTP) and Barnabé-Bagres are building new terminals. The collective capacity at the various Santos ports is expected to increase from 3.5 million TEUs currently to 10 million TEUs once all the new facilities are fully operational. And the recent discovery of oil in the Santos area is expected to drive even more investment.
José Di Bella Filho, president of the Santos port authority, Companhia Docas do Estado de São Paulo, has announced plans to extend the facilities beyond the original boundaries, according to a Business News Americas report. At an estimated cost of $5.6 billion, the project would increase the port’s footprint from 7.1 million square meters to 13 million square meters, nearly double the length of the docks and add 45 new berths.
The most daunting aspect of much of the port development in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America is the costly and time-consuming dredging. Once perfunctory endeavors, these operations now require in-depth studies and environmental assessments. As important as all the different projects at Santos project are to Brazil, no formal evaluation has been completed that identifies the best way to widen the access canal, which would allow for two-way ship traffic.
And while critical improvements and upgrades to the roads serving the port complex at Santos have been undertaken, the global economic crisis prompted the indefinite suspension of the construction of a rail line to São Paulo.
Although Brazil leads the way in port expansion, countries across the region have capitalized on early investments. But many projects were launched when the region was experiencing double-digit growth in trade. The sharp decline in trade has created overcapacity and eaten into profits, especially in container shipping.
Nevertheless, authorities in Brazil, Colombia and Uruguay remain confident that the 2 percent to 3 percent economic growth for their economies will be sufficient to attract carriers operating from Asia through the expanded Panama Canal. On the horizon is a newly deployed fleet of larger and more cost-efficient container ships – larger than 5,000 TEUs – according to Carlos Velez, vice president and managing director Latin America APL Limited. These ships can only call at deepwater hub ports, hence the rush to prepare deeper channels and install larger cranes. The larger ships will result in an increase in coastal shipping and services to shift Asian cargo from larger vessels at deep-water hubs to smaller ships that can deliver cargo to the shallower ports.
This increase could benefit coastal carriers, such as Brazilian-owned Log-In and Brazilian-flagged Aliance, a division of Hamburg Sud. Maersk Line’s Mercosul Line subsidiary could also receive a boost.
At the SeaCargo Americas conference in November, officials from the government of Uruguay and the Port of Montevideo announced their intention to build a second container terminal, part of a long-term strategy to become a regional hub for container transshipment. The first new container terminal was completed this year, as the result of $41.6 million loan from the European Investment Bank to Terminal Cuenca de la Plata S.A. and Nelsury SA.
South America’s west coast is also into its expansion mode. The Journal of Commerce has reported Chile’s Port of San Antonio, south of Valparaiso, will award two terminal concessions, one for grains and the other for containers. Construction is complete but the terminal is waiting for delivery of two new container cranes.
Peru’s new Muelle Sur terminal at the Port of Callao near Lima is scheduled to be fully operational by April 2011. Operated by DP World, the $730 million terminal is being built in three phases.
The plan involves creating a deep-draft facility, 1,268 meters of mainline berthage and 550 meters of side-feeder berth that would allow Callao to take up to four post-Panamax ships.
All this would also move Callao from being Peru’s national port to a more regional role. “We believe there’s an opportunity for Callao to emerge as a West Coast of South America hub,” said Michael Bentley, DP World’s director of Business Planning and Development for the Americas.
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