The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

THE Nassau Container Port’s operator yesterday said it was expecting the $2.6 billion Baha Mar development to “blow the lid off” container throughput volumes over the next 12 months.

Arawak Port Development (APD) company chief executive, Michael Maura, in an interview with Tribune Business, described container volumes to-date as being “pretty steady”.

“Most of the volumes we have seen associated with that [Baha Mar] have honestly been along the lines of aggregate and steel that would have gone into the structure, but we have not seen the (FFE) furniture, fixtures and equipment, all of the stuff that goes into the rooms the lobbies and the convention centre,” said Mr Maura.

He added: “We have been in talks with representatives of China State Construction. They are very confident that that facility will be completed in December of 2014.

“What we’re doing at the port is we’re having meetings internally for what we would anticipate being a huge spike in volume over the next 12 months. We’re just sitting tight and waiting for that project to kind of blow the lid off volumes, but other than that we’re kind of just pretty flat.”

According to Mr Maura, over the past four months the average weekly TEU (twenty-foot equipment unit) volume has been about 1,300, which equates to a total vessel usage of 50 per cent. This means 50 per cent of the container slots on vessels calling on Nassau each week are empty.

Mr Maura said the Arawak Cay port has not had a container rate increase in 22 months, and told Tribune Business that no such increases were being considered at this time.

In fact, Mr Maura said rates were going “the other way”, noting that the company was giving discounts to the shipping companies, particular the smaller firms who did not have the economies of scale in comparison to the larger players in the market ,such as Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) or Tropical Shipping.