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Crane Will Lift Port Manatee's Business

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By CHRISTOPHER O'DONNELL Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Published: November 24, 2007

BRADENTON - It has 28 wheels, weighs 463 tons and travels at a ponderous 262 feet per minute, or 3 mph, but it could be the key to expanding Port Manatee's business.
Port Manatee took delivery of a new $3.9 million mobile harbor crane Friday that will allow it to compete in the container shipping business for the first time.

For port officials, the purchase is a vital step to position Manatee County's seaport to compete for new business expected from the widening of the Panama Canal.

"We're optimistic it's going to have an immediate and dramatic impact," said Steve Tyndal, port spokesman.

It will take workers about five weeks to assemble the crane, which reaches a height of 257 feet when its boom is fully raised.

Once operational, the crane will be able to load and unload 25 to 30 containers per hour, lifting a maximum of 100 tons.

Containers, elongated steel boxes that can be stuffed with a wide variety of merchandise, have become the chief enabler of international trade. The equivalent of 44 million 20-foot containers were shipped through U.S. ports last year.

They can be unloaded straight from the ship onto trucks or trains so products inside do not get damaged.

Currently, Port Manatee only can receive container ships that have an on-ship crane, a small slice of the business.

With the widening of the Panama Canal expected to dramatically change shipping routes in the next few years, however, port officials realized a harbor crane was essential to the port's economic future.

The Panama Canal Authority projects that after the widening of the canal, as much as 60 percent of the world's shipping trade will pass through its locks, compared with 30 percent at present.

Much of that will be container ships carrying manufactured goods from Asia bound for the eastern United States.

Officials hope the Manatee port eventually will be handling 300,000 to 600,000 containers per year. The crane purchase, however, already has reaped some benefits.
Fruit company Del Monte, which leases 152,000 square feet of refrigerated storage space at Port Manatee, made a crane a prerequisite for it to renew its lease for another five years.

The deal is worth more than $1 million a year to the port. Officials also are in talks with two potential customers attracted by the crane, Tyndal said.

"We knew it was going to be a catalyst," he said. "We didn't realize it was going to create the level of interest we're finding already."

The port partnered with Logistec USA, a stevedore company to buy the crane.

The port will pay half the cost of the crane with grants from the state. Logistec will pay the balance.

The company will be paid back over 15 years with revenue from the crane's use and will share in those revenues thereafter.

Until Friday, Port Manatee was one of five of Florida's 14 deep-water seaports without a container crane.

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