The Port of Halifax is looking east and west for the services and business that will help fill the gap between capacity and freight.By George Lauriat, AJOTMichael Cormier, Vice President Business Development and Customer Relations, for the Port of Halifax has an intriguing problem that sets his sight both East and West. The Port of Halifax, which handled around 530,000 teus in 2006, down off from the more than 550,000 teus handled in 2005, the seventh consecutive year over 500,000 teus. But this total is far from the potential capacity of the facilities. The Port of Halifax has a realistic capacity of over one million teus with minimal work and a very potential capacity of over two million teus with additional development. Cormier’s job and that of the Port Authority is to fill potential with containers. To do this, the authority has had to think a little differently than it has in the past. Namely, looking East through the Suez to the India sub continent market for future freight and services while looking West to the markets in the US and Canadian mid-West while not ignoring the developing North-South trades. It sounds a little head twisting but Cormier has been through both the Suez and Panama canals three times in his “other” career as a merchant mariner. With this perspective, Cormier says, “one of the most satisfying moves has been setting up representation in India in less than a year.” The speed from conception to reality, underscores just the importance that the Port of Halifax placers on the developing Indian subcontinent market. Cormier sees a change in the shipping business and to a degree this has been reflected in the port’s numbers. Traditionally, the port has been sold as first call inbound from Europe because of its deep water and location farther east (thus closer to Europe) than other US East Coast ports. The deep water also allowed ships to “top off” outbound where draft restrictions prevented full loading. But with dredging and terminal expansions up and down the East coast the dynamics have changed. “If we want to take advantage of our opportunity [potential two million teu capacity] we have to look far a field,” Cormier said. “We are 1,800 miles closer to Mumbai than the Port of Vancouver…even Singapore, Indonesia and the Pearl River Delta (southern China) ports are closer when other factors are considered,” he added. The Suez services also play well to the Port of Halifax’s strong suit of deep water. Like the Suez Canal itself, the Port can handle virtually any containership in service. Nevertheless, the port and the Atlantic Provinces in general (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Eastern Quebec) are relatively small markets. The key to the port’s success lies with its rail and road connection to the US mid-West markets. In a nutshell, the port will only be as successful as CN allows it to be. Although last years numbers were slightly off, Cormier says that the suspension of the Halifax-Boston-Portland feedership service had more impact than might be imagined at first glance. Because the boxes are handled first by the liner services and transferred to the feedership, the inbound and outbound represents two box moves. Equally, in reverse the box can be counted two more times again (although the reverse service is usually a little less). The result of this multiplier is that a 1,000 teus of business is worth roughly 3,500 teus to the port tally. Also Hapag Lloyd’s purchase of CP Ships last year, undoubtedly led to some boxes being moved to the Port of Montreal that would have in past years been discharged in the Port of Halifax. Overall, Cormier is very optimistic that with the new Eimskip services, including those connecting Halifax to the ports of Boston, New York/New Jersey and Portland, Maine that some of the box numbers lost will recover. And the potential future with Suez services and those connecting into the Mediterranean could someday help fill the gap between capacity and potential.