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Source: The Globe and Mail
Source: Working In These Times
Source: Georgetown Times
Rep. Peter DeFazio says he has few qualms about shipping coal to Asia through the Port of Coos Bay.
The Springfield Democrat tells The World newspaper that trying to block plans to ship coal to Asia won’t stop countries like South Korea from burning coal to produce electricity.
He adds that free trade agreements make it illegal for the U.S. to block coal exports to South Korea.
More at My Northwest
Cargill Inc. recently reported an 82% slide in fiscal fourth-quarter profit, citing tough trading conditions in beef and soybean processing and an economic and political environment that the agribusiness group has said distorts the pricing of risk.
Cargill’s global meatpacking, grain processing and food business is viewed as an industry bellwether and, like rivals such as Archer Daniels Midland Co. ADM-0.15% and Bunge Ltd. BG+0.48% , it has suffered from dislocated trading and processing conditions as a series of droughts hit global crop supplies.
From the Wall Street Journal
APM Terminals’ executives have recently isolated some of the main challenges faced by international terminal operators.
Vice president and chief financial officer Christian Moller Laursen has described the advent of a “New era in ports” where container yards processing significantly larger volumes from individual vessels as well as general global volume growth will have to move cargoes in time for the next scheduled vessel, and then the process will begin all over again, in some cases on a daily basis.
Another issue is productivity, highlighted by APMT’s Terminals’ head of project implementation, Soren Sjostrand Jakobsen, at the Future Ports conference in Stockholm.
“Our customers are building bigger and bigger ships and it is imperative that we are able to increase our delivered productivity at minimum the same pace as the ships grow – but preferably much more,” he says.
From Port Strategy
The New York Times reports that in the race to gain cargo from the anticipated Panama Canal expansion, 'nearly every port in the game still faces major challenges and expenses — including the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which plans to spend $1 billion to raise the Bayonne Bridge roadway (above) by 64 feet to allow the giant ships through on their way to to Newark and Elizabeth, N.J.'
The Obama administration has now moved to speed up the review process for developing and deepening the harbors for several of these ports, including those of New York and New Jersey; Charleston, S.C.; Savannah, Ga.; Jacksonville, Fla.; and Miami. The initiative “will help drive job growth and strengthen the economy,” President Obama said in announcing it last month.
But some who are following the efforts have begun to express skepticism about the hope and money going into dredging mud and raising steel. With so many ports competing for a share of the bounty, experts are questioning how big that bounty will be. “Everybody is trying to go after it — there are going to be few beneficiaries, in my judgment,” said William D. Ankner, a former official of the Port Authority of...
It’s been anything but quiet on the western front.
The past year has seen three heated disputes in the Pacific Northwest in which the ILWU is fighting to preserve what the union believes is its jurisdiction.
In Southern California, the Office Clerical Unit of ILWU Local 63, an unpredictable affiliate of the ILWU, has been working without a contract for two years and could shut down the nation’s largest port complex if negotiations get out of hand.
More at the Journal of Commerce
Source: WBAI Radio's Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report
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