Shipping line MSC plans for big growth at Mt. Pleasant office

Three large paintings look out over the two-story entrance lobby of Mediterranean Shipping Co's. Mount Pleasant office.

All depict cargo container ships, which are at the heart of the company's business. Two of the vessels, the MSC Pamela and MSC Katie, are named for daughters of two locally based executives of the Swiss shipping line. The company also has the MSC Charleston among its fleet.

MSC's Aponte family, from the Italian coastal city of Sorrento, likes the personal touch. It names many of the company's 350-strong fleet after the female family members of its worldwide staff.

It's a fair bet that many of those ships will steam in and out of Charleston Harbor for a long time to come, thanks to a sizable expansion of its presence in the local market.

Last week, MSC unveiled plans to build a new South Atlantic headquarters in Mount Pleasant and at the same time possibly double its work force. Already one of the Port of Charleston's biggest customers, the move would make MSC one of the town's largest private employers.

The company plans to build its 45,000-square-foot office on 7 acres as part of the Hungryneck Boulevard Extension development near U.S. Highway 17 and Interstate 526.

MSC hopes to move into its new home by summer 2008, said Sergio Fedelini, the company's vice president in Mount Pleasant, whose daughter Pamela inspired the ship of that name.

In its increasingly cramped offices off Long Point Road, MSC now employs some 200 people. The company has outgrown the 20,000-square-foot space, just eight years after the line christened it, Fedelini said.

As part of an incentive agreement with the state Department of Commerce, MSC will add a guaranteed 120 new jobs, but could double its work force to about 400 people over the next three to five years, he said.

The deal marks a economic coup for the town and a firm commitment from a company that has offices across the globe. At full strength, the new office will be one of the company's largest in North America. Most of the jobs will go to local hires, Fedelini said.

"It's a big number for one location," he said.

Swift growth

MSC was founded in 1970 and has grown from a small, conventional ship operator to the world's second-largest container carrier, a business fueled by the surge in global trade. Today, the privately held company is based in Geneva in landlocked Switzerland.

Its total fleet has the capacity to haul more than 1.1 million 20-foot-long containers, the shipping industry's standard yardstick. That's about half the total number of containers the Port of Charleston handles annually.

The growth of the company's Charleston area operations has been swift over the past 14 years.

Fedelini opened MSC's first local office on Romney Street with less than five staffers in 1993. The first MSC-affiliated vessel tied up to the docks in North Charleston on July 19 of that year.

"When we came to Charleston, our ships were so small the (harbor) pilots used to call us and say, 'We can't find your ships,' " Fedelini said. "Now, we're told our ships are too big."

A year later, Fedelini moved to larger premises on King Street Extension. Five years later, in July 1999, the company — with a staff of 40 — made the jump across the harbor to Mount Pleasant.

From its Long Point office near the entrance to the State Ports Authority's Wando Welch Terminal, MSC controls the company's cargo movements through docks in Charleston, Savannah and Jacksonville, Fla. The staff handles millions of dollars of invoices every week.

Also, MSC's marine operations are based in Mount Pleasant, where it controls 50 company ship movements a day in and out of ports from Canada to the Caribbean Sea.

Important customer

The line is bullish on Charleston, based on a new long-term agreement that locks in hundreds of vessel calls a year for the local waterfront. Specifically, the company inked a five-year deal in May with the SPA that will bring more than 230 ship calls annually to Charleston, cementing MSC's place as the agency's second-largest customer behind Maersk Line. Between 2002 and 2006, MSC's volume in Charleston doubled.

At the time the SPA deal was signed, MSC said the port's high productivity rate and quick turnaround times, combined with the deepwater channel and other factors, should continue to boost growth for its business at the Port of Charleston.

It makes for the type of customer the SPA likes.

"This isn't someone who came in and just leased a couple of offices," said Bernard S. Groseclose Jr., president and chief executive officer of the Ports Authority.

MSC could have taken these jobs to a number of other cities, Groseclose said. Among them: Houston, Baltimore and several cities in New Jersey, according to the Charleston Regional Development Alliance.

But the port CEO believes the company picked Charleston because of its relationship with the maritime community, the local work force and the quality of life.

That's precisely what the town of Mount Pleasant wants to hear. Already a Top 10 employer in the town based on its number of employees, MSC likely will be among the Top 3 once the new office begins to fill out, said Myles Stempin, economic development coordinator for the town.

Despite Mount Pleasant's growth in the housing and retail sectors, it has struggled over the years to attract and retain a base of well-paying employers in other industries. Many residents work in other municipalities, and it has seen some fast-growing businesses relocate to other locales, such as Benefitfocus.

Stempin said attracting multinational firms such as MSC could help reverse those trends. To wit, he's hoping other port-related businesses will follow MSC's lead in Mount Pleasant. This deal represents the best kind of endorsement for the town, he said.

"It's still a residential community, and we're trying to change that," Stempin said.

Reach Peter Hull at 937-5594 or phull@postandcourier.com.