Resolution 'within 30 days'

By the time new State Ports Authority Chief Executive Officer Jim Newsome addresses the local maritime industry in a month, he hopes to have one long-awaited bit of news to share.

The SPA and its top customer, Danish shipping giant Maersk Line, likely will have reached an agreement before his first State of the Port speech to the Propeller Club of the Port of Charleston on Oct. 22, Newsome said in an interview

Tuesday with editors and reporters of The Post and Courier.

A deal with Maersk Line would cap nearly two years of back-and-forth contract negotiations.

The drawn-out talks became public last December, when the world's largest container carrier announced it would pull all of its ships from the local port by the end of next year. The company said at the time that it could not reach a cost-reduction deal with the SPA that also was agreeable to the International Longshoremen's Association.

Only three weeks officially into his new job, Newsome said he expects one of the port's biggest problems to be solved "within 30 days," and suggested it would provide a favorable resolution for the local maritime industry. The former shipping industry executive said he hopes to be able to cite a new agreement with Maersk as a major accomplishment for the SPA at the Propeller Club's annual gala.

Whether the company will recall any business to Charleston remains unclear. In the first months of this year, Maersk relocated three of its seven services to other Southeastern ports.

Maersk's external communications manager, Dana Magliola, declined to comment Tuesday on the SPA negotiations. But he shared the company's appreciation for "the positive tone of the discussions" under the agency's interim chief executive, John Hassell, and now Newsome.

Former Chief Executive Officer Bernard S. Groseclose Jr. resigned soon after Maersk announced its plans to leave.

Newsome said he and new Chief Commercial Officer Paul McClintock have a "good dialogue" with the line.

Maersk accounts for 15 percent of the world market, Newsome said. "We have to keep them here."

He described the proposed agreement as "a bilateral matter between us and Maersk."

International Longshoremen's Association Local 1422 President Ken Riley could not be reached for comment.

The Maersk situation intensified late last year after the company, in an effort to cut its operating costs, proposed moving to a section of the Wando Welch Terminal known as the "common-use" area, where SPA workers would perform jobs that otherwise fall to organized labor.

In the Tuesday meeting, Newsome also said the SPA's new container terminal on the former Navy base in North Charleston likely will open in 2017, instead of 2014, because of what he described as a three-year setback in the economy. But the terminal could still open as early as originally planned if demand requires.

The SPA's board of directors this week will receive a copy of the agency's strategic plan, which becomes public at next month's board meeting. Newsome would not reveal its contents Tuesday but said he hopes to update the document each year.

Newsome said Charleston boasts several attributes that will ensure it remains competitive as a container port, including a high productivity rate among workers on the waterfront and the deepest natural harbor in the South Atlantic. That's a keen advantage as shipping lines order larger vessels in anticipation of the Panama Canal expansion in 2014.

But Newsome also noted that a 30 percent container volume decline this year leaves SPA cargo volumes at 1999 levels.

"That's not explainable by external factors," Newsome said of the staggering drop in business. "I have to say we own that."

Regrowing business is his top priority, he said.

"The biggest disconnect is when you see all these great facilities and all these fabulous people, then you see where our business has not gone," Newsome said. "It's heartbreaking."

Reach Allyson Bird at 937-5594 or abird@postandcourier.com.