Houston pulls out of marketing partnership with Gulf ports

Tampa, Mobile and Houston joined forces to lure container lines.    A joint marketing effort between the ports of Houston, Tampa and Mobile aimed at attracting container lines to the Gulf has been disbanded after the Port of Houston Authority pulled out because of potential legal concerns, one of the officials involved said.
   Ricky Kunz, vice president for trade development and marketing at the Port of Houston, made the remark Thursday during a quarterly meeting of the U.S. Commerce Department’s Supply Chain Competitiveness Advisory Committee, saying the port authority didn’t want to run afoul of the Federal Maritime Commission.
   Houston officials realized that the “Gulf Coast Advantage” might be on shaky ground upon the advice of outside counsel and after seeing how the ports of Seattle and Tacoma sought FMC permission for a discussion agreement before formalizing a management alliance to address joint challenges, he told American Shipper during a break in the proceedings. The Seattle-Tacoma alliance, and even the new discussion agreement between the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, go well beyond marketing to allow talks on how to address congestion and environmental issues affecting their competitiveness.
   The three Gulf ports began marketing themselves to carriers as the “Gulf Coast Advantage” in 2010 to demonstrate their collective market potential and attract container services to the Gulf. Tampa has a market of 8.5 million people within a 100 miles of the port; Mobile imports a large amount of automobile components for plants in Alabama and surrounding states, and exports wood products; and Houston is a major metropolitan area and gateway to Texas. The campaign has not resulted in any material success so far, but officials say that could change with the 2016 opening of a wider section of the Panama Canal for larger vessels.
   Kunz said the marketing push by the three ports was having a gradual effect, but taking time because carriers “don’t redeploy a fleet overnight.” Carriers that belong to the G6 Alliance have indicated that they are interested in adding Gulf services from Asia once the Panama Canal expansion is completed, he added.
   (Read about Port Tampa Bay and the headwinds it faces to grow cargo business in American Shipper‘s March magazine feature, “Work in Progress,” pages 38-43.)