Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Stockton Port Sets Vessel Record

By Mark Edward Nero

For the second year in a row, the Port of Stockton has set a record for annual vessel traffic. The port saw total of 247 ships during 2015, compared to 230 ship arrivals in 2014, which had been Stockton’s previous all-time record.

But despite the increased number of cargo ships entering the Northern California port, the overall cargo volume was down: it was 3.87 million metric tons in 2015, compared to 2014’s 4.11 million metric tons, port Director Richard Aschieris told the local media near the end of 2015.

The decline, Aschieris said in late December, reflects a change in the mix of cargo being moved through Stockton.

For example, coal exports slipped to an expected 1.07 million metric tons in 2015 from 1.74 million metric tons in 2014, and such exports could disappear entirely in 2016 because of shifts in global demand and monetary exchange rates, he said, due to its expense on the international markets and the high value of the US dollar.

After coal, the top cargos that the port handled in 2015 were liquid fertilizer (620,000 metric tons); bulk cement (376,000 metric tons); steel products (298,000 metric tons); and molasses (219,000 metric tons).

The Port of Stockton, a deepwater port in north-central California, serves the state’s inland agricultural region and typically handles such commodities as rice, animal feed and fertilizer.