by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
Boasting distribution centers from giants like Wal-Mart and easy access to roads and rails, the Jacksonville Port Authority is targeting several large Asian shipping lines as potential new clients. The shippers could make million-dollar differences in the local economy, but port officials say they’ll have to dig deep to attract them.
The port’s senior director of trade, development and marketing, Roy Schleicher said Monday that a single large shipping concern like China’s Cosco could spend millions locally and create dozens of jobs. To get that kind of commitment from the Asian shipping concerns, however, Schleicher said Jacksonville’s harbor would have to be deepened.
The waters approaching Jaxport were dredged last year to 41 feet. To compete with ports like 48-foot-deep Savannah and 55-foot-deep Norfolk, Schleicher said the harbor would have to be deepened again to at least 45 feet. He estimated the cost in the hundreds of millions, which the port would share with the U.S. Corps of Engineers.
“If we don’t get down to 45 feet, we’re not going to get the big ships in here,” said Schleicher. “Forty five feet is the industry standard, and without it we’re not going to get the big shippers to bring in the big ships. We might get some of their smaller ships, but not the big ones.”
Jacksonville’s shallow waters cost the port last year. Two of the country’s largest terminal operators declined to sign with the port, citing the shallow approach, said Schleicher.
“They didn’t open here, because we couldn’t get to 45 feet,” said Schleicher, who declined to name the operators. “They said they would never get the big ships in.”
Port spokesperson Robert Peek said a feasibility study on dredging the harbor was already underway. He said the cost would be weighed against the jobs and revenue that the deeper harbor would create. He said deeper waters were at least five years away.
In the interim, Schleicher said Jaxport would emphasize in upcoming meetings with Asian shippers its access to highways and railroads and its relationship with major distributors like Wal-Mart and BMW.
Schleicher will be part of a three-man team that will tour Asia in early June. At stops in China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, Schleicher said the large distributors’ presence at Jaxport would be attractive to shipping concerns like China’s Evergreen Group and Cosco.
The cost to unload and ship to major markets is about the same from Jacksonville, Charleston and Savannah. To tip the scales in Jaxport’s direction, Schleicher said he would point to better access to transportation and less congested, more efficient docks.
“The cost to get to Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit is very similar from those ports, it’s almost dollar for dollar,” said Schleicher. “We have to give them other reasons to come here. We have better intermodal transportation and we have less congestion at our docks. We’ll get them in and out faster.”
The Asian shippers could provide a direct line for Jacksonville manufacturers to one of the world’s largest consumer markets, said Schleicher. The port has previously focused on trade routes through the Caribbean and South America, he said, but the port has been putting in legwork the past three years to compete in Europe and Asia. The runaway growth predicted in Asia presented opportunities that couldn’t be ignored, said Schleicher.
“When you talk about markets like South America, you’re talking about maybe 5 percent growth. China’s up in the double digits. If we just sit idly by, we’ll have nominal growth, and we want to do better than that.”