Jacksonville Port Authority profit up 18%

Jacksonville Port Authority profit up 18% The Jacksonville Port Authority on Wednesday reported operating profit of $14.5 million for its 2007 fiscal year ended Sept. 30, up 18 percent from $10.5 million in the prior fiscal year.
   The North Florida port authority’s annual revenue increased 4 percent to $39.9 million despite a 4.5 percent drop in cargo volume to 8.31 million tons.
   Containerized cargo in the 12-month period fell 11 percent in tonnage terms to 3.64 million tons, while on a unit basis it was down 8.7 percent to 710,073 TEUs. The port saw a 2.3 percent improvement in bulk cargoes at 2.25 million tons, while vehicle volume rose 4.3 percent to 1.26 million tons. Breakbulk cargoes declined 4.2 percent to 1.16 million tons. A total of 129,838 passengers embarked on cruise ships departing the JAXPORT Cruise Terminal, up slightly from the 128,463 embarkations in 2006.
   Some 42 percent of all the port’s cargo traffic was to and from the Caribbean, with South America (21 percent) and Europe (16 percent) the next biggest trading partners.
   Asian cargo amounted to only 4 percent of Jacksonville’s volumes during the fiscal year, but that figure is set to change drastically when the new 800,000-TEU TraPac container terminal for Japanese carrier Mitsui O.S.K. Line starts operations by the end of this year.
   Another Asian carrier, Korean line Hanjin Shipping, signed a memorandum of understanding with the port authority last October to develop a $360 million and 1-million TEU capacity container terminal that has a target date of 2011. The port authority said that when both new facilities are fully operational they will treble the port’s box capacity making it one of the 10 largest U.S. container ports. ' Simon Heaney