By Paul Scott Abbott, AJOTThe collapse of the US home construction market is leading to precipitous declines in imports of lumber and related commodities through ports throughout the nation.
The Maryland Port Administration (MPA), for example, has seen imports of lumber drop 61% in the January-through-September period of 2007 compared with the first nine months of last year, according to MPA spokesman J.B. Hanson.
North Carolina State Ports Authority’s vice president of business and economic development, Glenn Carlson, said he is hopeful that a rebound is imminent.
Carlson cited the fact that forest product imports into Tarheel State ports fell 45% for the authority’s fiscal year ended June 30, 2007, compared with fiscal 2006 numbers, but the comparative decline this year has been reduced to 36% for the July-to-September period.
Typically, North Carolina port yards have held more than 50,000 bundles of lumber in the past, a number that had fallen to low in the 20,000s but that now is back up to the 30,000-to-35,000 range, he said.
South Carolina State Ports Authority spokesman Byron D. Miller said import figures are down not only for building supplies and products, including lumber and wood, but also for furniture.
At Port Manatee, on Florida’s Tampa Bay, spokesperson Jill VanderPol said double-digit declines are being experienced in lumber imports after several years of record numbers for the commodity. But she noted that the port’s newly built 174,000-square-foot Warehouse 11 is nonetheless full of forest products brought in by Gearbulk.
At South Florida’s Port Everglades, the housing sector bust is being felt most in the importation of cement, down 40% so far this year, according to Manuel Almira, the Broward County port’s assistant director of business development. He said Port Everglades officials are glad a strategic decision was made not to extend a key lumber terminal lease, adding that the bulky nature and characteristically long dwell times for the commodity make it a less-remunerative cargo for the port than most other goods anyway.
The downward trend also is being experienced on the US West Coast. Port of Portland spokesman Josh Thomas said figures are down at the Oregon port for building materials, forest products, and furniture and, at non-port-authority facilities, cement. He added that volumes bound for the 1.3-million-square-foot Lowe’s distribution center that opened in July in the nearby city of Lebanon, OR, are helping to cushion the adverse impact.
Even in New Orleans, where post-Katrina building continues, forest product imports are down, slipping 14 percent in the first half of 2007 compared with the first six months of last year.
“All the break-bulk commodities now are just not doing well – lumber, steel, anything associated with housing starts,” Port of New Orleans spokesman Chris Bonura said. “It would be even worse if we didn’t have the building boom, if you will, that we have going on in the local area.”
A rare exception to the trend is Alabama State Port Authority facilities, where spokesperson Judith Adams reported the national housing market impacts as “minimal” because of extensive construction activity in the Mobile area, including on port projects and at numerous commercial and residential sites.
