By Dan McCue
Staff Writer

They compete fiercely for business at almost every turn, but come February, the nation’s leading port operations professionals, carrier executives, shippers and suppliers will converge on Charleston for the first-ever port productivity conference.

The event, which is being presented by Marine Digest and Cargo Business News, a Seattle-based publisher, and hosted by the South Carolina State Ports Authority, is being held Feb. 22-23 at the Embassy Suites and Convention Center.

The conference comes at a critical time for the industry, said Marion Bull, the SPA’s manager of market research and advertising. According to Bull, U.S. container cargo volume has grown nearly 100% in the past 10 years, but collectively, U.S. ports have been able to increase productivity by about 10%.

“The reality is that our nation’s international trade volume is growing faster than our infrastructure’s ability to handle it,” he said. “While municipalities and the federal government struggle to find ways to prioritize, fund and permit projects—with the long lead time that entails—the cargo keeps coming.

“With that as a backdrop, coupled with the cost and time it takes to construct port terminals and the inland infrastructure to support them, a significant focus of this conference will be helping ports find new ways to get more efficiency out of existing assets.”

Charleston was chosen to host the inaugural conference because of its long-standing reputation as a highly productive port. It continues to be the fourth busiest container port in the United States and ranks fifth in terms of the value of the cargo passing through it, according to the U.S. Census Bureau Trade Data Branch.

By another productivity measure, container moves per dockside crane per hour, the Port of Charleston ranks second only to Hong Kong, the world’s busiest port.

“We’re branded as the ‘Pros of Productivity,’ so Charleston is the logical place to start such an event,” said SPA spokesman Byron D. Miller. “That said, we are constantly seeking creative, effective, safe ways to improve our productivity at the dock, in the yard and at the gate. It’s that attitude that makes Charleston stand out.”

But even with that reputation, in the larger scheme of things, the challenges confronting the SPA are no different than those confronting other ports.

“How long has the SPA been seeking to expand its facilities?” Miller asked, recalling the authority’s scuttled hopes of building a container port at the tip of Daniel Island and efforts now underway to open new cargo terminals at the old Navy yard in North Charleston. “Other ports follow the same processes we do because we’re all governed by federal law.”

But there are also significant differences between the nation’s ports. Each port community has a unique character that makes solutions unique. Those differences have sometimes obscured the discussions of port productivity in the past, Bull said.

“It’s a topic that’s frequently debated at industry events but usually in the context of some other priority topic, whether it be port security, dredging, access to transportation infrastructure or the like,” he said. “This event is a result of recognizing that more time is needed to be spent on this narrowly focused topic.”

All the same, Bull said, “We don’t want the port productivity conference to be a think-tank for port wonks. What’s important about this conference is it will actively involve other members of the trade and transportation community who have a stake in the success of our ports.

“Ports can’t solve their problems unilaterally. It takes a team effort, and that’s going to be the approach of the conference.”

For more information on the conference, visit www.portproductivityconference.com.

Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.

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