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Advertisers Dupuch & Turnquest & Co.
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Freeport Container Port continues to expand to meet global business demands
FCP is an up-and-coming center in the world of shipping. Strategically located 65 miles from Miami, it is at the crossroads of the Americas and on the trade lanes to European, Mediterranean, Far Eastern and Australian destinations. It also has the added advantage of being located within a bonded Free Trade Area where there is no tax.
The FCP is a joint venture between Hutchinson Port Holdings and the Grand Bahama Development Co. It is privately owned and operated and boasts the latest technology and equipment. HPH, headquartered in Hong Kong, has holdings in such strategically located, important ports as Kwai Chung, China; Shanghai, China; Felixstowe, England; Thamesport, England; the Panama Canal, Panama; Balboa, Panama and Cristobal, Panama, making it the world’s largest independent port operator. HPH handles about 10 percent of the global container traffic annually.
Grand Bahama Port Authority invited HPH to invest in FCP by 1997. In July 1997, it opened Phase One of the Container Transshipment terminal, a $78.3 million investment, which soon filled to more than 90 percent capacity.
Phase II was completed in November 1999, costing an additional $71 million, and it, too, is currently being extended for an additional 400 feet of dock for use when additional cranes are needed.
The terminal has a one-mile approach from the pilot station to the berth and an approach depth of 47 feet with a minimum depth alongside of 51 feet. According to Containerization International’s January 1999 article on “The Freeport Phenomenon,” one advantage that the Freeport facility has is deep water. The article said that only one port on the entire Eastern seaboard of the United States, that in Norfolk, Va., can match Freeport’s 47-foot channel and 51-foot alongside berth draughts.
FCP has direct, scheduled connections to 70 ports worldwide covering 11 different trade regions and thus is a very attractive transshipment point.
According to Mike Power, general manager of the Bahamas Air & Sea Port Operations of Hutchinson Whampoa Limited, six months after FCP opened, one company, The Mediterranean Shipping Co. filled much of it. MSC has apparently stopped using Miami as a hub and started using Freeport. This strategy has been one factor in the FCP’s development.
Other carriers have now come and are quickly filling the rest of FCP. Some slot charter space and deal with smaller volume.
Power explained that the biggest challenge is making sure that traffic moves in an orderly fashion throughout the FCP facility. To do this, the company has instituted state -of-the-art computer systems that track a container from before it leaves a ship until it enters onto another one, providing a measure of security.
This is an important feature when it comes to preventing drugs and other illegal items from being transshipped through Freeport. “It is very difficult for anyone to know where a particular container is,” said Power.
He explained that the computer system allocates a spot for the container to be placed when taken off the ship. An individual operator never works in the same place with the same container. Operators are rotated. An operator gets the order to move the container to a particular spot on the deck. This operator must then log on the system, punch in his personal code, acknowledge that he has received an order to move a particular container to a particular spot and proceed to do so. If the operator does not respond to the order in a matter of seconds, the computer notes that the operator has committed an error. Containers are stacked up against one another facing out with only one row open to one street, making it difficult for anyone to tamper with them. “Our operators have had almost no errors,” noted Power.
Furthermore, noted Power, “Ninety-nine percent of the containers that go through here have nothing to do with the Bahamas. They are simply being dropped off here and being re-loaded. We are out in the middle of nowhere, unlike many ports in the United States, which is a security benefit. Our systems prevent containers going through the gate unless they are an import. Those containers must be cleared by Bahamas customs.”
The Bahamas is one of only four countries in the world to have U.S. pre-clearance. The FCP works closely with the U.S. Embassy, the U.S. law enforcement officers positioned on the island, the Bahamas Drug Enforcement Unit and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to find and resolve any problems. Powers reported that the DEA recently gave FCP a “Certificate of Appreciation” for working hard to combat drugs.
Thus far, operations have run smoothly and Powers said FCP is looking forward to growing more business.
This process will be started by the shipyard, which will attract 20-30 new subcontractors dealing with engineering, ship repair, painting and general maintenance. This new business will expand into the growth of the Grand Bahama Sea Air Center, a strip of land between the airport and the container port to be developed as, more or less, an industrial park.
“It is all about niches,” said Power, “and I think our niche will be in the cargo area.” With the tonnage that is moving through FCP in the brief time that it has been open, FCP is headed in the right direction.
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Table of Contents The Bahamas: An established tourism and tax-free financial services center experiences a renaissance |
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It is five a.m. and already the Freeport Container Port is bustling with activity. Three of the seven Super Post Panamax Quay Cranes are moving some of the 950,000 twenty-foot equivalent units that the container port sees annually.
This gives the FCP 88 acres of land, 15,000 TEUs, of stacking capacity and 3,000 feet of berthing space. (A TEU is the way that the industry measures the capacity of a ship in terms of volume and is the equivalent of a 20-foot container.) It can accommodate up to six ships, depending on the size, alongside one another. The facility also boasts 22 straddle carriers, 225 reefer points and three empty handling stackers.