Prince Rupert may attract additional tenants this year

Prince Rupert may attract additional tenants this year Maher Terminals hopes it may announce one or two other shipping lines as users of its new terminal at the Port of Prince Rupert, British Columbia by the time it opens in the fourth quarter of 2007.
   China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO) announced earlier this week that it will be begin calling the terminal on a weekly basis in the fourth quarter of this year.
   Chief Executive Officer Brian Maher said he understood the COSCO service will call at multiple ports, but he said Prince Rupert may also be employed by a company interested in starting an express service from the Far East to a single port in North America.
   The terminal is served by the Canadian National Railway which will offer double stack service to major cities.
   The new terminal will be the closest major North American container facility to Asia.
   Maher, whose New Jersey-headquartered company is being acquired by an affiliate of Deutsche Bank, said his firm hoped to complete that transaction in about a month.
   He said his firm was still in the early stages of negotiating what kind of compensation the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey may require for transfer of its lease in Port Elizabeth, N.J., to Deutsche Bank.
   Tenants of the Howland Hook Marine Terminal on Staten Island and the Port Newark Container Terminal- both of which were sold earlier this year – got into well-publicized battles over what they viewed as unreasonably high demands for compensation by the port authority in order to obtain approval of lease transfers.
   But on Friday Maher was full of praise for the port authority and its leadership.
   He made his comments after a breakfast meeting in Newark where he presented the Newark Regional Business Partnership's Transportation Person of the Year Award to Port Authority Chairman Anthony Coscia.