A global real estate firm recently flagged the Port of Mobile as an emerging seaport poised for growth.
The port, which draws its largest concentration of business from Birmingham-area companies, is one of a handful of ports nationally that’s beefing up infrastructure to vie for future market share from the widening of the Panama Canal to open in 2014, according Jones Lang LaSalle’s Port, Airport and Global Infrastructure Outlook.
And with exponential growth in its container operations expected, Jones Lang LaSalle is “bullish” on Alabama’s main port and the benefits it will reap from the recent pick up in containerized trade.
“It is an example of what the future is going to hold with the widening of the Panama Canal and new routes,” said John Carver, executive vice president of port, airport and global infrastructure for Jones Lang LaSalle.
“There’s a lot of energy poured toward Mobile, through the authority and shipping lines and importers.”
The port’s containerized cargo grew from nearly 24,000 TEU (20-foot equivalent unit, a measure for capacity in containerized transportation) in 2003 to more than 129,000 TEUs in 2008, said the report.
And it is expected, once its container facility is entirely completed, to handle an annual volume of 800,000 TEUs.
Port analysts are watching Mobile closely, too.
“(Mobile is) in a good position, with good labor and good rates,” said John Martin, a port analyst with Martin Associates in Pennsylvania. “It’s a good port that’s positioned for growth.”
Martin said Mobile’s container terminal that opened in 2008 will be key in attracting additional cargo through the widened Panama Canal and Suez Canal.
And that’s important because of the growth of auto manufacturing in Alabama and the rail connections the port has into the heart of that production.
It could potentially carry into Atlanta, Nashville and Memphis, he said.
Earlier this year, the port authority said it moved up in the rankings – to the ninth largest port in the nation in terms of tonnage from 10th. And the authority is still in talks with Norfolk Southern Corp. to connect with a proposed $112 million intermodal facility the railroad plans to build in McCalla, near Birmingham.
“Mobile is a whole different animal,” said Jones Lang LaSalle’s Carver of competing ports.
“It’s blessed with a railroad system that will disperse cargo to one of the largest metros in the country. Mobile is taking advantage of the widening of the canal and a bigger pipeline in terms of larger ships and more cargo.”
After experiencing a difficult year in 2009, the port is seeing some uptick in traffic, said Jimmy Lyons, director of the Alabama State Port Authority. And the port recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the Panama Canal to promote and foster commercial activity between the two.
“Some are touting it will change the world,” said Lyons of the widened canal.
“It will bring some incremental business to us, in the form of existing shipping lines going to larger ships. It will bring more economies of scale because the cost of shipping every day lowers as you get to bigger ships.”
And despite a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Port of Mobile remains unaffected and open for business, he said.
Other ports Jones Lang LaSalle flagged include Manatee near St. Petersburg, Fla., and Gulfport in Mississippi, both in the Gulf of Mexico, and Philadelphia’s port.
The widening of the canal “is creating opportunity for complementary industrial real estate development alongside these emerging port markets and their associated intermodal hubs,” said the outlook.
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