The Helen Delich Bentley Port of Baltimore is the most productive of all the shipping container ports in the land, according to one logistics-focused publication.
The results are in. And…..for the third consecutive time the .@portofbalt was named the most productive #port in the nation!
— Port of Baltimore (@portofbalt) December 12, 2016
The Journal of Commerce ranked the Port of Baltimore ahead of far busier U.S. ports, including the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles out west and the Port of Virginia in Norfolk, in terms of productivity for calendar year 2015. The publication judged ports’ productivity in part based on how many container moves happened between the time when a ship arrived and left a given port. According to a release from the Maryland Port Administration, that rate was 71 container moves per hour, making it the most efficient place for container ships to unload their cargo in the country.
The “most productive” title applies to all of 2015, though the publication had also already ranked the Port of Baltimore as the most productive port for all of 2014 and the first six months of 2015. The publication did note on its website that its method of determining productivity factored in year-over improvement, which could have pushed some larger ports out of the ranking that couldn’t as easily improve on past performance as smaller ports.
The Maryland Port Administration attributed the Port of Baltimore’s success to the 11 cranes snatching containers off of ships down at the Seagirt Marine Terminal. According to the agency, four of the cranes are some of the world’s largest.
Gov. Larry Hogan was proud of the superlative. “This is a tremendous way to end what has been a great year for the Port of Baltimore,” he said in a release.
That great year that Gov. Hogan referenced also included the port securing a 10-year contract extension with Finnish paper giant UPM, receiving a $1 million federal grant to upgrade diesel equipment down at the port in order to reduce air pollution and welcoming its first-ever mega-sized container ship following the widening of the Panama Canal.
Given its efficiency, just imagine all of the cargo that the Port could move from ships and out to inland states on double-stacked trains if the city could secure the funding to widen the Howard Street Tunnel. Mayor Pugh probably has that in mind, given her recent written appeal to a certain business mogul-turned-public official.
