Port of Toledo posts 16% increase in cargo tonnage for 2017

The Lake Erie port saw 9.8 million tons of cargo cross its docks in 2017, port officials told local media source the Toledo Blade.    The Port of Toledo in Ohio posted a 16 percent increase in cargo tonnage during 2017, port officials told the Toledo Blade.
   Iron ore traffic and aluminum shipments largely aided the 9.8 million tons that crossed the port’s docks, though 2017 volumes were still 2 million tons short of the port’s record peak in 2014.
   Coal volumes at the port declined by 200,000 tons compared to 2016.
   On a bright note, iron ore shipments across CSX Transportation’s Lakefront Dock totaled 3.4 million tons during 2017, more than double the amount in 2016.
   General and miscellaneous cargo was the smallest sector by weight, but it’s “prized by the port authority because of the dockworker jobs and revenue it yields,” the Toledo Blade reported.
   The remaining 60,000 tons of general cargo was comprised of machinery and other project cargo, steel and bagged minerals (including cement, salt and calcium nitrate).
   Joe Cappel, the port authority’s vice president of business development, told the Toledo Blade that winter weather in late December could bring a burst of shipping activity at the 2018 shipping season’s start. “People may be trying to catch up with shipments they missed out on at the end of this year,” he said.
   Grain traffic through Toledo fell by a little more than 24 percent during 2017, mainly due to “pretty minimal corn shipments,” said Cappel. Soybeans “were on par with 2016,” and there were also substantial inbound shipments of wheat and oats, he said, along with canola moving through the Kuhlman Corp. terminal, which was “something we hadn’t handled in a few years,” he told the Toledo Blade.