The Coast Guard said late Thursday that the Port of Morehead City, N.C., had reopened and normal operations resumed after the Unified Command in charge of cleaning up explosives that spilled at the State Port Facility completed the clean up of the hazardous materials from the area.

The port was closed on Tuesday morning after a fork-lift operator punctured one or more containers of the highly explosive material PETN.

Although no injuries or environmental damage were reported, the port quickly closed and evacuated an area within 300 yards of the port. All vessel traffic was prohibited within the safety zone.

Carteret County first responders and emergency management officials responded to the hazardous materials incident at the port. The remediation work was performed under the direction of the U.S. Coast Guard.

“The incident response for the entire event was safe and was brought to a successful conclusion,” said Port State Facility Lt. Robert Jones, the Coast Guard’s security officer for the state port facility. “As a party in interest, the State Port Facility shall have a direct interest in the investigation of the incident,” he said.

- Peter T. Leach, The Journal of Commerce Online.

Containerized exports in Southern California soared in December, increasing 40.2 percent over December 2008 at the Port of Los Angeles and 30.9 percent at the Port of Long Beach.

The nation’s two largest container ports closed out their worst year in decades. Total container volume, including loaded imports and exports and empty containers, was down 14 percent in Los Angeles to 6,748,945 20-foot equivalent units. Long Beach was down 22 percent to 5,067,597 TEUs.

Imports continued to show gradual improvement as they have done each month since late summer. Long Beach reported an increase of 13.4 percent over December 2008. Imports through Los Angeles were 4.4 percent lower than the previous December.

Total container volume increased 8.7 percent compared to December 2008 in Long Beach and 0.35 percent in Los Angeles.

The trend of recent months indicates that the U.S. trade recovery will be led by exports. “The spike in loaded outbound containers was a nice way to put a tough year behind us,” said Geraldine Knatz, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles.

Trade analysts anticipate a gradual recovery in U.S. imports, which out-number containerized exports by a factor of two to one.

- Bill Mongelluzzo, The Journal of Commerce Online.

Höegh Autoliners will start calling the Port of Charleston later this month with its Middle East service, which will bring two new ship calls a month to the port.

The first vessel, the Höegh Bangkok, is scheduled to arrive at the Union Pier Terminal in Charleston on Jan. 29 to load BMWs made at the manufacturer’s South Carolina plant for export to the Middle East.

“Importantly, this is new business for the Port of Charleston,” said Jim Newsome, president and CEO of the South Carolina State Ports Authority. “The service is expected to load more than 5,000 vehicles annually that Hoegh previously moved across a competing South Atlantic port.”

According to the car carrier’s website, Höegh’s Middle East service offers four to five sailings a month from U.S. load ports that currently include Jacksonville, Baltimore, Wilmington, Del. and New York, to discharge ports in the Middle East that include Beirut, Aqaba, Jeddah, Port Sultan Qaboos, Dubai, Jebel Ali, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, and Dammam.

- Peter T. Leach, The Journal of Commerce Online.

INTTRA, an e-commerce platform for the ocean freight industry, introduced a Web-based application that allows shippers, freight forwarders and their partners to track in-transit containers across multiple carriers.

INTTRA Act Track and Trace 2.0 tracks container events provided electronically by carriers on the platform and can be searched by container, bill of lading, carrier booking number, carrier name, date range and much more. Filtered results are available more quickly than obtaining information by visiting individual carrier sites.

- Thomas L. Gallagher, The Journal of Commerce Online.

U.S. trade with other countries increased broadly in November as imports outpaced exports, widening the trade deficit by $3.2 billion.

The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, through the Department of Commerce, announced Tuesday that total November exports of $138.2 billion and imports of $174.6 billion resulted in a goods and services deficit of $36.4 billion, up from $33.2 billion in October, revised.

November exports were $1.2 billion more than October exports of $137 billion. November imports were $4.4 billion more than October imports of $170.2 billion.

Compared with a year earlier, imports and exports were significantly lower. Exports were down $3.3 billion, or 2.3 percent, and imports were down $10.1 billion, or 5.5 percent. In November, the goods and services deficit decreased $6.8 billion from November 2008.

The October to November increase in exports of goods reflected increases in foods, feeds, and beverages ($1.3 billion); automotive vehicles, parts, and engines ($700 million); and capital goods ($400 million). Decreases occurred in consumer goods ($700 million), industrial supplies and materials ($500 million), and other goods ($400 million).

The October to November increase in imports of goods reflected increases in industrial supplies and materials ($2.1 billion), consumer goods ($1.4 billion), and capital goods ($1.2 billion). Decreases occurred in foods, feeds, and beverages ($200 million) and automotive vehicles, parts, and engines ($100 million). Other goods were virtually unchanged.

- Thomas L. Gallagher, The Journal of Commerce Online.

U.S. container ports finally turned the corner in December, with imports estimated to be higher than in December 2008. This would mark the first year-over-year monthly increase in containerized imports in two and one-half years.

According to the monthly Port Tracker published by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates, year-over-year increases in imports are projected to continue for the next six months.

However, while growth rates compared to the same months in early 2009 will appear large, the rate of increase will be modest compared to the second half of 2009, said Ben Hackett.

“Although the first five months of 2010 are forecast to post large increases over the same period of the prior year (20.2 percent for the monitored West Coast ports and 13.1 percent for the monitored East Coast ports), growth rates for the prior five months are expected to be small,” Port Tracker stated.

Although the exact December numbers have not yet been calculated, it appears that 2009 ended with a total import volume of 12.7 million 20-foot equivalent units for the 10 U.S. ports covered by Port Tracker. That represents a 17 percent decline from 2008 and the lowest annual total since 2003.

Nevertheless, it appears that the industry is poised for growth in 2010 as the U.S. consumer returns to the stores. “Retailers are still going to be cautious with their inventories, but we wouldn’t see these increases in imports if stores weren’t expecting sales to improve,” said Jonathan Gold, vice president for supply chain and customs policy at the National Retail Federation.

“The U.S. economy is experiencing positive growth, with imports on the rise as a result of re-stocking and a rising consumer demand,” Hackett said.

In related developments, Port Tracker noted that the active vessel capacity of the top 20 container lines dropped 2.4 percent in 2009. Capacity management will remain a key carrier strategy in 2010, and this could force freight rates to increase.

Carriers will continue other cost-cutting measures such as slow-steaming to reduce fuel consumption. This will result in longer transit times and will put pressure on supply-chain management.

Dan Smith, a principal with the Tioga Group, said prospects in 2010 for the intermodal railroads, trucking companies and freight intermediaries also appear to be positive.

“If the ocean carriers can be described as ‘cautiously optimistic,’ the U.S. railroads could be described as ‘cautiously hungry,’” Smith stated in Port Tracker. He noted that both the western and eastern railroads are expanding their mainline capacity and inland hubs in anticipation of growing cargo volumes.

- Bill Mongelluzzo, The Journal of Commerce Online.

The popular PierPass program giving shippers incentives to move cargo at off-peak hours through Southern California ports may no longer be justified because of reduced cargo volumes, the U.S. head of NYK Line said Monday.

“Right now, we need to take a new look at what we are doing, in terms of whether it still makes sense to have those night gates, NYK Line (Americas) Executive Vice President Peter Keller told the National Retail Federation annual conference.

He said the program, launched in 2005 to cope with congestion at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, has spread cargo movements to nights and weekends, reducing truck congestion at the nation’s largest container gateway. Created by terminal operators including NYK Line subsidiary Yusen Terminals, the program offering discounts for goods moved outside the crowded daytime hours has been popular with shippers.

But terminals say they are getting enoiugh money from the PierPass fee to cover the cost of night and weekend operations, and shippers and truckers recently complained when PierPass dropped some gate coverage, forcing them to move goods during the day and pay higher daytime fees.

Keller said a bigger change is needed because terminal operators are now coping with the higher costs of keeping gates open with diminished freight volume.

“Pierpass was something we started for all the right reasons, and with the deterioration of volumes there is significant capacity on the day side to handle the business,” he said. “The issue is that it has been institutaionlized and many shippers now prefer the night gates. Now it’s a cost issue.

“We have fully manned day shifts, we are also paying excessive amounts of overtime to man the Pier pass gates. Right now we need to take a new look at what we are doing, in terms of whether it still makes sense to have those night gates,” Keller said.

- Peter Tirschwell, The Journal of Commerce Online.

On Jan. 11, a vehicle processing center for Mercedes-Benz USA (MBUSA) opened its doors at the Port of Brunswick, Ga., with the the first delivery of imported Mercedes-Benz autos to the port’s Colonel’s Island Terminal. Ports America, Inc., will be the stevedore for the M/V Paradise Ace, the MOL vessel carrying the cars.

“We would like to thank Mercedes-Benz USA for its confidence in our terminal and operations to handle not only its export but also import traffic through the Port of Brunswick,” said Georgia Ports Authority’s (GPA) Executive Director Curtis J. Foltz. “We are pleased to welcome MBUSA’s additional business to Colonel’s Island Terminal and the new jobs and economic opportunities it represents.”

“This is a tremendous milestone for our company, and we look forward to working with the Georgia Ports Authority,” said MBUSA’s National Import and Domestic Logistics Department Manager Peter Bresnee. “Bringing imports into Brunswick is a great match for us with our exports that have been there since 1997.”

MBUSA’s 70,000-square-foot facility is the second vehicle processing center to locate on the south side of Colonel’s Island Terminal. The new center consolidates MBUSA’s Southeastern shipping operations and makes the Port of Brunswick MBUSA’s South Atlantic hub. The facility will bring more than 40,000 Mercedes-Benz vehicles into the port annually. MBUSA’s imports are expected to increase the overall total units at Colonel’s Island Terminal by more than 16% in 2010.

The center will process vehicles headed for dealers in the Southeast, Oklahoma, and Texas.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the Port of Savannah recently seized more than $1.2 million in counterfeit merchandise from two separate shipment, officials announced on Jan. 6. The shipments had a combined total domestic value of $551,799, and a combined manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $1,292,816.

The first shipment was seized on December 8, when CBP officers discovered a shipment of 10,240 pairs of counterfeit sneakers in a container designated for examination. The sneakers had been manifested as women’s clothing. The second seizure occurred on December 17, when CBP officers discovered 1,320,000 counterfeit DVD-R discs in a container that was selected for examination. The shipment was in transit to South America.

“As the primary U.S. border enforcement agency, CBP is charged with enforcing trade laws,” said John Porter, area port director in Savannah. “CBP continues to devote time and resources to intercept these fraudulent shipments. These seizures are a prime example of the hard work CBP officers and import specialists perform daily in combating the illegitimate trade in counterfeit merchandise.”

Surface trade between the United States and its North American Free Trade Agreement partners Canada and Mexico grew for the fifth consecutive month in October and showed improvement in the rate of decline from a year earlier.

Trade using surface transportation among the NAFTA countries amounted to $61.4 billion in October, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics of the U.S. Department of Transportation. That was a gain of 7.2 percent from September to October, picking up the pace of steady growth since May.

Compared with last October, surface trade fell 15.5 percent, slowing the pace of year-over-year declines of more than 20 percent through the first nine months of 2009. The bottom of the slump was in May, when surface trade fell 35.4 percent compared with a year earlier to $47.9 billion.

About 88 percent of U.S. trade by value with Canada and Mexico moves by truck, rail and pipeline.

U.S.-Canada surface transportation trade totaled $36.3 billion in October, down 19 percent compared to October 2008. The value of imports carried by truck was 15.8 percent lower in October 2009 compared to October 2008, while the value of exports carried by truck was 9.5 percent lower during this period.

U.S.-Mexico surface transportation trade totaled $25.1 billion in October, down 10 percent compared to October 2008. The value of imports carried by truck was 4.2 percent lower in October 2009 than October 2008 while the value of exports carried by truck was 13.5 percent lower.

- Thomas L. Gallagher, The Journal of Commerce Online.