Panama Canal denies having reached capacity limits

Panama Canal denies having reached capacity limits    Jorge Quijano, maritime operations director of the Panama Canal Authority, denies the canal has reached saturation level, as alleged by the Transpacific Stabilization Agreement association of shipping lines.
   “At this time we are running at about 90 percent overall capacity,” Quijano told American Shipper. “There are several projects and process changes we are working on that should yield us more capacity over the short and mid term.”
   The number of all-water Asia/U.S. East Coast container services using the canal has increased, particularly since the U.S. West Coast port shutdown of 2002. According to a recent report of ComPair Data, the global liner-shipping database. Sixteen weekly all-water Asia/U.S. East Coast and one weekly all-water Asia/U.S. Gulf Coast liner service via the Panama Canal were in operation on Oct. 1. Most such services each employ eight or nine ships.
   The Panama Canal Authority recently reported that 600 more Panamax-sized ships transited the canal in its fiscal year ended Sept. 30, when compared to previous year.
   “Because we do not control vessel arrivals there are days were we may run at 100 percent capacity and other days when so few vessels arrive (low season) that we may just run at 70 percent,” Quijano said. Also, the size and characteristics of the vessels “may require imposing some transit restrictions that also tend to reduce capacity.”
   The Transpacific Stabilization Agreement said in a statement Sept. 22 that “diversion of U.S. East Coast cargo to all-water service via the Panama canal has reached saturation levels … with ships fully booked and some cargo being rolled to later sailings.” It added that new or expanded services from Asia to the U.S. East Coast “are nearly impossible” due to several factors, including the capacity of the canal itself.
   Yet, the demand for services via the Panama Canal route continues to grow among carrier and shippers as the South California port complex of Los Angeles-Long Beach struggles to cope with rising container cargo volumes.
   Last week, the “CKYH” alliance of COSCO Container Lines, “K” Line, Yang Ming and Hanjin Shipping said it would add in December a fourth weekly Asia/U.S. East Coast all-water container service via Panama.