2014 Green Gateway Award Winners Honored

By Mark Edward Nero

Maersk Line, COSCO Container Lines, Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruise Lines, Princess Cruises and Holland America Line have been announced as the 2014 winners of the Port of Seattle’s annual Green Gateway Partners Awards.

The awards, now in their fourth year, recognize the environmental achievements of the port’s cruise and containership operators. This year’s winners were honored March 19.

“These awards show that maritime businesses are doing the right thing for the environment every day,” Port of Seattle CEO Tay Yoshitani said in a prepared statement. “Their efforts have removed hundreds of tons of pollutants from Puget Sound air.”

The Green Gateway Partners Awards have a minimum requirement of participation in the port’s At-Berth Clean Fuels program or use of shore power. These and other environmental activities are assigned point values and depending on the number of points earned, Green Gateway Partners can achieve one of three recognition levels – gold, silver or bronze.

The awards and scoring system are conducted by analysts from Cascadia Consulting Group and Glosten Associates.

For the second year in a row, Holland America Line earned the port’s highest level award, platinum, for use of low-sulfur fuels beyond the required levels, zero discharge of ballast water in Puget Sound, and Marine Sanitation Devices contributed to its high scores in the Air & Energy and Wastewater categories.

Earning gold was Princess Cruises for its use of low-sulfur fuels beyond the required levels, zero discharge of ballast water in Puget Sound, advanced wastewater treatment systems and marine sanitation devices.

Earning silver for their use of low sulfur fuels were Celebrity Cruises, Royal Caribbean, COSCO Container Lines and Maersk Line.

COSCO to Add Transpac Capacity

Chinese ocean carrier COSCO Container Lines announced Tuesday that it plans to restore a total of 12,000 TEUs of capacity to its CEN transpacific service.

COSCO said the CEN service, which rotates between Northern China and the North American West Coast, will see its current six 5,500 TEU vessels swapped for six 7,500 TEU vessels. The expanded service, which will also add Ningbo as the last westbound Asia call, will begin phasing in the larger vessel on April 24 with all six expected to be in service by the end of May. COSCO operates the service as part of the CKYH Alliance, which also includes ocean carriers “K” Line, Yang Ming and Hanjin.

"Although we are still in a very challenging market financially, we have had many requests from both importers and exporters to restore capacity on this popular trade route and to consider adding a Ningbo call and we have heeded their advice," said a spokesman for COSCO Americas.

"It should be noted however, that we are still in a precarious position as far as current freight levels and the rising cost of moving cargo. We are cautiously optimistic that we will see some freight growth this year and hope that freight levels can increase to the point that further capacity can return to our transpacific services," he said.

The expanded CEN westbound rotation will be: Dalian, Xingang/Tianjin, Qingdao, Shanghai, Ningbo, Prince Rupert, and Long Beach.

The eastbound rotation will be: Long Beach, Oakland, Yokohama and Dalian.