APM Terminals is transferring its lease at Houston’s Barbours Cut terminal to the port authority, which will market the 80-acre site to other users.
Maersk Line, which now uses the APMT facility, will continue its existing services to Houston, the Gulf Coast’s busiest container port. Maersk is a partner in the 2M alliance with Mediterranean Shipping Co., which uses Houston’s other container terminal, Bayport.
Maersk Line and APMT are both part of the Maersk Group but operate independently.
For years, APMT has operated its own section of Barbours Cut, including separate gates from the rest of the facility. APMT advised the port authority that it will give up its lease effective July 24.
“Simply put: It has been decided that the business will be better handled by the port authority,” Mike Shaffner, director of terminal operations at APM Terminals-Houston, told JOC.com.
Maersk will continue to serve Houston with all of its existing services and may call at both the Bayport and Barbours Cut, said company spokesman Tim Simpson.
The port authority has begun a major rebuilding of Barbours Cut, which opened in the 1970s and was built out in the 1990s. The terminal has 235 acres of developed land.
The rebuilding is beginning with rebuilding of the wharf and installation of super post-Panamax cranes at the opposite end of the terminal from the APMT acreage. The section that APMT is giving up has older-generation Panamax cranes too small for the largest ships now calling the port.
In a letter to the Texas Workforce Commission, APMT said its exit from Barbours Cut will eliminate jobs of approximately 23 non-union company employees. Most of the approximately 86 International Longshoremen’s Association workers at the APMT facility will transfer to other port operations.
Source: JOC
Source: JOC