Background
There was a huge evolution in container ships industry in past 50 years. In 1960s decade was the start of the shipping companies’ competition for building the biggest container ship. Companies like Maersk Line and Hapag Lloyd introduced their first vessels constructed for carrying containers. Apart from the running cost dramatically reduced by using bigger container ship and it is also contributed to environment which is one of the hot topics in recent world.
”When you get bigger ships, you can more efficiently carry more cargo, so the carbon footprint you get per tonne of cargo is smaller.” Unni Einemo, Sustainable Shipping
Today’s biggest cruise ship in the world was launched since 2013, is the Triple E class vessel Maersk McKinney Moler owned by Maersk, Denmark.
As you can noticed in below figure, there was a huge increase of the container ships’ capacity since 1960s from 1000 TEU to 18,000 TEU and the term “Panamax” stands for the size limits for ships traveling through the Panama Canal. Formally, these limits and requirements are published by the Panama Canal Authority (ACP), titled "Vessel Requirements". These requirements also describe topics like exceptional dry seasonal limits, propulsion, communications, and detailed ship design.
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The Canal History
The earliest mention of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama dates to 1534, when Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, ordered a survey for a route through the Americas that would ease the voyage for ships traveling between Spain and Peru. Such a route would have given the Spanish a military advantage over the Portuguese.
Given the strategic location of Panama and the potential offered by its narrow isthmus separating two great oceans, other trade links in the area were attempted over the years. In the late 1800s, the French began to build a sea-level canal across the Isthmus of Panama while failed due to insufficient capital and difficult working conditions creased by diseases. In 1914, the Panama Canal was built at a cost of $375 million and United States ran Canal operations for 85 years until December 31, 1999. Figure 2 in below showing the route of Panama canal from US East coast to West coast.
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The Panama Canal connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean which is a key conduit for international maritime trade, but is already reached its maximum capacity compared to original estimated maximum capacity, the canal traffic in 2009 reached 299.1million tons of shipping.
In order to improve the capacity issue, Panamanian government decided to expand Panama canal in 2006 and began in September 2007 at total cost of US$5.2 billion. This project is also known as “Third set of locks” and target to complete in year 2014. The new lock opening will doubling capacity and allowing more traffic, from existing locks which able to carry up to 5,000 TEUs and increase up to 12,600 TEUs (which able to allow Post-Panamax vessels to pass through it.) The Expansion will double the Canal’s capacity, having a direct impact on economies of scale and international maritime trade.
The expansion program consists of several components: • New Locks (Third Set of Locks) • Pacific Access Channel • Improvement of Navigational Channels (Dredging) • Improvement to Water Supply
Below figure showing the detail of expansion project:
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Main competitors of Panama Canal
There are two main routes are competing with Panama Canal for those shipment from Asia to U.S. East Cost nowadays, which is Suez Canal Route and U.S. Intermodal System. The major concerns for Carrier Company are total involved transport cost, capacity availability, transit times and the infrastructure of intermodal market. And the major advantages of these two competitors are basically having one or two reasons as mentioned.
For the Suez Canal, it competes with Panama Canal due to its shorter navigation time to the U.S. East coast and its capacity to handle Post-Panamax vessels. The average navigation time from Asia-Suez Canal-U.S. East coast is about 21.1 days compared to Panama one is about 21.6 days. Another advantage of using Suez Canal is no locks in the canal which will minimize the waiting time due to the busy traffic in Panama Canal and hence minimize the loss of cost and the cost transit through Suez canal is cheaper than Panama Canal.
For the U.S. Intermodal System, its advantage is definitely shorter navigation time with approximately 18.3 days compared to 21.6 days. Also it can offer to develop economies of scale in the transpacific maritime route, which frequently uses Post-Panamax containerships, as it requires only five ships for a weekly service rotation compared with eight ships required by the Panama Canal.
For this reason, 75% of Asian imports go through U.S. Intermodal system. Only 20% go through the Panama Canal because it's longer. The rest goes through the Suez Canal directly to the U.S. east coast, which around 5%. Below figure show you the main competitors of Panama Canal route in terms of map.
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However, these two competitors still have its own potential issues and will become a concern after expanding Panama Canal.
Suez Canal --- it doesn’t provide economical of scale for those shipments from Northeast China (e.g. Shanghai), it really depends on the external factors about Asia manufacturing trend, this is related to potential slowing down of economic growth in china as well as RMB inflation issue, which is likely to shift some manufacturing base and exports to Southeast Asia, this will make Suez Canal route become more attractive. Another big threat in the Suez Canal is the attack from Somali piracy which forces an increasing number of shipping companies to choose alternate routes.
The figure on the left showing the association of Southern East China which is an economic competition with China, these external factor will directly affect the competiveness of Suez Canal.
U.S. Intermodal system --- The U.S. Intermodal System is a complex of three distinct transportation modes: ocean shipment, movement by rail and truck. The system’s efficiencies are highly dependent on an advanced and sophisticated network of large commercial operators with highly trained personnel, as well as support services and industries to maintain the network. However, West Coast port and railroad reliabilities have been affected by labor problems (Strikes and shortage of labor to handle new cargo) and congestion caused by capacity expansion challenges. Apart from this, rail doesn’t carry as much cargo as the Post-Panamax ships. One ship carries as much as 16 trains. That means the Panama Canal expansion will be more cost effective, even though it will still take longer. Therefore, it will probably be used by commodities exporters, who are more concerned with cost than time. High-value, time-sensitive goods, such as electronics, will still use West Coast ports and rail. Therefore, the Canal expansion may take some share of current West Coast freight. Below figure shows the West Coast main ports and the inland route to East coast.
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Competitive pressure in West Coast Hub ports
In pace with the Panama Canal expansion as well as East Coast improvement (key Atlantic ports improve water depth), the West Coast will see much greater competitive pressures in future.
LA and Long Beach port --- Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach are two busiest container terminals in U.S, they act as an important intermodal gateway for U.S. intermodal system, and they all in total can handle over 15 million TEU annually, accounting for 40% of all freight entering the US. However, there are number of challenges that will threaten the share of these two ports: • Port productivity --- Strike happened in year 2012 which cost US billions lost, this is mainly related to workers’ wages and capacity demand increase issue, and this will highly affect the productivity of these ports. Also the rising of stevedoring charges in LA/LB ports which will further damage the competitive advantages accordingly. It is around $15 US more per box per move on an 8000 TEU vessel in Long Beach over New York-New Jersey,. At 52 calls annually, it is nearly US$4 million more in labor cost which reported in year 2010. The port charges are expected to be pushed up by: a. The switch to low-sulfur and cleaner-burning distillate fuels to reduce air pollution from ships, terminal facilities, truck and rail connectors in and near highly populated port regions; b. Improving port terminal facilities’ efficiency, hours of operations, and upgrading connections to regional and national road and rail networks; c. Reducing congestion in the current primary ports of LA/LB; • Congestion of inland transit system --- capacity and infrastructure investment is not keeping up with demand for railway system in U.S. Aging highway network (roads and bridges) creating congestion, which will cause impact on efficiency of the whole system. In the other words, the expansion project in Panama canal may help to decongest the West Coast main ports of LA/LB, this may be a short term solution of Congestion problem in U.S. intermodal system but will lift up the share in East Coast in the meantime. Below figure showing TEU shares comparison between West Coast/East Coast and Gulf Coast from year 2000~2010. [pic] • Environmental concern --- The twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are, together, the single largest source of air pollution in the metropolitan Los Angeles area. Both ports have implemented a number of environmental programs to reduce pollution levels like Green Port Policy adopted in 2005 and Clean air action plan agreed in 2007. There will be many opposition from environmental party about damaging the wildlife habitat especially in Long Beach, California if further increasing capacity at LB port. • Transshipment possibilities in Caribbean port --- Caribbean hub ports are located close to Panama canal which is a perfect position of transshipment, also it will provide benefit for container vessels as part of water transit distances can be saved by feeder operation and become more efficient as result. They are already able to serve large ships and offer “hub and spoke” operations to Gulf of Mexico ports and will attract more shipping companies to choose Panama Canal instead of West Coast ports after expansion. One of the best ranking ports in Caribbean Sea is named Cartagena. [pic] • Improvement in East Coast Hub ports --- There are few ports in east coast are planning to increase the water depth in order to support larger vessel, this will help to boost the position of Panama canal. Below show you the graph about the dredging plan in east and gulf ports. [pic]

Potential downsides of Panama Canal expansion project
The Panama all water option seems to be the cheapest alternative for shipments from Asia to U.S. East Coast while there still some uncertainties in behind: • Uncertain Toll charges --- Canal tolls are normally based on vessel TEU capacity while Panamanian Government haven’t announced at this moment which could make nonsense of all cost projections. These are still secret and nothing has been said either as to whether they will be based on capacity or load; • Delay in improving plan of East Coast ports --- Any major delay in improving East Coast ports will postpone the maximisation of the Panama’s market role. However, NY/NJ and Norfolk will be available for bigger ships and use of Caribbean hubs will booth the position; • Manufacturing base shift --- Manufacturing shift from China to Southeast Asia and India will make the Suez canal route more attractive; • Complete date of expansion project --- The volume needed to support tripling capacity from 4,000TEU vessels to 12,000 TEU vessels is unlikely to emerge by 2014;

Conclusions
The Panama Canal expansion is expected to affect global transportation trade routes and well as the ports of West Coast in U.S. The Panama Canal is an efficient route, but is reaching its maximum capacity. These capacity challenges will be resolved by target in year 2014. The Panama Canal expansion is expected to take some of the shares of its main competitor U.S. intermodal system due to its reliability, faster delivery to East Coast ports and transportation cost might decline in destination countries. For the U.S. Intermodal System to remain competitive in the face of the Panama Canal expansion, further investment in U.S. infrastructure and a more integrated approach is needed to reduce bottlenecks in the system. Apart from this, there are more external factors that will affect the trend of global transportation trade route like the potential drop of China’s economical growth as well as infrastructure improvement at East Coast. Anyway, every party in the transportation trade route will try their best effort to maintain their competitive advantages in order to provide an effective and productivity service to their customers, this is also essential to the health and growth of the retail industry and the U.S. economy.

Reference list 1) Largest Ships in the World (http://www.largestships.com/biggest-container-ship) 2) Official Website for the Panama Canal Expansion (http://micanaldepanama.com/expansion) 3) 100th Anniversary & Critical Art Channel Panama Canal (http://100yearspanamacanal.com/index.php/panama-and-the-canal/canal-expansion-project) 4) World Trade 100, "Trade in the Americas: Expanding the Panama Canal for the 21st Century," November 2, 2007 5) Business Insider (http://www.businessinsider.com/economic-impact-of-la-and-long-beach-port-strikes-2012-12) 6) Los Angeles Times (http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/28/business/la-fi-panama-canal-20111229) 7) Cargo business news (http://www.cargobusinessnews.com/Dec09/portcomm_westcoast.html) 8) Maritime Professional (http://www.maritimeprofessional.com/Blogs/Martin-Rushmere/May-2011/Panama-Canal-impact-gets-more-uncertain.aspx) 9) Hellenic Shipping news worldwide (http://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/News.aspx?ElementID=87bfcc05-5acf-417e-a8b0-3f3e59366e05)

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Figure 8. Map of Caribbean Sea and Gulf ports

IELM6048

Terminal and Warehousing operations
[by Mr. Tse Po Lun 1998124153]

Impact of Panama Canal expansion project on trading routes and ports in West/East Coast
April 2014

Figure 7.