By Leo Quigley, AJOTWith two container terminals on the East Coast of the U.S. and two terminals on the West Coast of Canada Michael Moore understands the North American box business as well, or better, than most. As President and CEO of Global Container Terminals Moore is responsible for the operations of New York Container Terminal on Staten Island; Global Terminal & Container Services in Bayonne, New Jersey; Vanterm on Port Metro Vancouver’s inner harbour and Deltaport located at Roberts Bank, British Columba, within the jurisdication of Port Metro Vancouver and a stone’s throw from the Canada-U.S. border. While he’s watched the slow down in the container business this year and expects a even slower growth in 2012 he remains optimistic about the future to the point where Global Container Terminals, after expanding the capacity of Deltaport with a new third berth, is now looking at a major expansion of its Port Bayonne facility with larger berths, on-dock rail service, the acquisition of additional land and plans for equipment modernization to handle the larger container ships that will soon be transiting the expanded Panama Canal. “I think we’re lucky in that we’re in the second largest market in North America – New York, New Jersey – and we’re in the heart of Canada’s Asian Gateway (Port Metro Vancouver). “Our Canadian volumes remained very strong in 2010 in both of our locations. In 2011 they’ve remained relatively flat and we’ve taken a cautious approach to budgeting. “U.S. volumes are slightly down, but not significantly,” he said. What Moore has come to appreciate is the relationships Canadian ports now have with all levels of government and customers. “There’s a very clear and logical thread that runs from the federal government in Ottawa, down through the provincial government to Port Metro Vancouver on what the requirements are for building infrastructure to handle the growth. It’s a very clear, logical message that I think the U.S. would love to emulate because we’ve let our infrastructure in the U.S. fall a little bit behind,” he said. “I would say, for example, Port Metro Vancouver’s focus on Terminal Two (a sister terminal to Deltaport) and planning out that we’ll need another terminal at Deltaport in the future – the fact that they’re planning that far ahead speaks incredibly for the focus that Canada has. I don’t think the U.S. has quite that clarity of vision.” He said Global Terminals is very supportive of the new highway under construction to handle the volume of trucks destined to and from Deltaport and the development of a logistics park on First Nations land adjacent to Deltaport. “As far as we’re concerned Canada really has it right in terms of thinking to the future,” Moore said. Moore said he has also been impressed by the quality of the people the Canadian government and industry has assigned to the task of planning future capacity. The fact that the ILWU on the West Coast recently signed an eight year agreement also shows that the entire sector understands the need to provide future capacity and future reliability, he said. “It was very, very positive,” he said, “and the union leadership really listened to the number one concern of our mutual customers; and that was the concern about instability and they really just took that off the table – I think the leadership did a great job of leading that through.” Moore also has praise for Canada’s two major, Class A, railways: Canadian National and Canadian Pacific that have recently adopted Supply Chain Agreements designed to keep all participants involved in the movement of containers informed as to the movement of containers from the shipper to the terminal and advised of problems that occur in meeting benchmarks that have been agreed upon. “I’m a huge fan,” Moore said. “It is something I’d like to emulate in the States, over time, with our railroad partners there.” “Our cooperative relationship with CN and CP is paying dividends, our customers are starting to talk abo