Crowley Picks Up Slack After Horizon Lines’ Puerto Rico Exit

Crowley Maritime Corporation says that it doing a very good job of selecting up the slack following Horizon Lines’ sudden departure from the Jones Act U.S. mainland to Puerto Rico commerce route late final yr.

Since mid December, Crowley has created extra weekly cargo carrying capability for about 780 masses – or 78 p.c the 1,000 masses beforehand transported by Horizon Lines in a mean week. This week, Crowley’s Liner Services group is marking the maiden voyage of its new flat-deck barge 455-4 on the route, carrying a full load. The vessel is predicted to achieve San Juan on Monday.

“Before Horizon left the trade, we had, on average, about 230 empty container slots each week on Crowley vessels,” defined Jose “Pache” Ayala, Crowley vp, Puerto Rico. “That space has been absorbed by customers. In mid-December, we structurally modified our barge layouts to optimize the stow factor, which generated enough new capacity for another 100 loads a week. Then on Jan. 15, we began running our vessels at an accelerated speed, which increased our frequency of service and weekly cargo capacity by another 250 loads. And most recently, we deployed the new flat-deck barge, which will arrive every other week in Puerto Rico – effectively increasing capacity by 200 loads per week. ”

In addition to rising its weekly cargo carrying capability, Crowley has ordered and begun inserting into service greater than 6,500 items of latest cargo dealing with tools, together with 40-foot, 45-foot and 48-foot excessive dice containers, 20-foot ISO tanks and a wide range of fastened and slider chassis.

“We completely understand that there has been some stress on the island’s supply chain given the abrupt departure of Horizon Lines from the market,” mentioned John Hourihan, Crowley senior vp and normal supervisor. “We have responded aggressively to replace the void they left, and are confident that current concerns will be short lived and that the island’s overall supply chain will be back to normal very soon.”

Crowley says that as for the brand new barge 455-4 en path to San Juan, it went to nice measures to make sure the vessel would accommodate the dimensions and sort of kit hottest within the Puerto Rico commerce.

Last November, Jones Act shipper Horizon Lines introduced plans to terminate its Puerto Rico operations by the top of 2014 as a result of persevering with losses and no hope for future profitability. At the identical time, the corporate mentioned it might be promoting the remaining firm, made up of its Hawaii and Alaska operations, to The pasha Group and Matson, Inc. respectively. Those gross sales had been anticipated to shut someday in 2015.

Crowley has been serving the Puerto Rico market since 1954, longer than another service within the commerce. The firm, with almost 200 Puerto Rico workers, can be the main ocean service between the island commonwealth and the U.S. mainland with extra weekly sailings and extra cargo carried yearly than another transport line. In addition, Crowley is presently constructing two new LNG-powered container/Ro-Ro ships to be deployed within the commerce in 2017.

Crowley was additionally lately accredited for a 20-year expanded lease with JAXPORT which might see the consolidation of Crowley Liner Services’ operations on the port of Jacksonville. Under the settlement, Crowley will relocate its Puerto Rican service from its personal terminal alongside Jacksonville’s harbor to JAXPORT’s Talleyrand Marine Terminal and increase its present leasehold in preparation for deployment of the 2 new LNG-powered ConRo ships.