By Susan Smith , Staff ReporterNEITHER KINGSTON'S transhipment port APM Terminals Limited nor Kingston Wharves Limited suffered damage as a result of the passing of Hurricane Ivan.
However, operations at both were negatively affected by the hurricane.
Kingston's transhipment port, APM Terminals Limited, has experienced serious delays in vessel departures. The terminal shut down its operations on Thursday afternoon to make way for Ivan. On Monday, sixteen vessels carrying domestic and reconsolidated cargo queued up at the port. According to port operators this number far exceeds the regular line-up of vessels on the weekends.
The weekends are normally the busiest for shippers. Between six to ten vessels would normally call at the port. The delay in unloading and reloading containers from each vessel has already started to affect the delivery time of containers and imported commodities.
WORKING ASSIDUOUSLY
Miss Rosalie Donaldson, senior vice- president of the Port Authority, assured the Financial Gleaner on Wednesday that the Terminal is working assiduously to clear up the backlog. She said, "There were originally about sixteen vessels lined up. Three were sent off on Wednesday, four will be completed by Thursday (yesterday)." Yet, there is no certainty whether the backlog will carry over into another hectic weekend. Miss Donaldson says APM Terminals will try its best to clear this up.
"All that has happened is that everything is delayed but we are not expecting an increase in prices or a fall in revenue because of this," she further explained. Alrick Mitchell, operations manager for Kingston Wharves Limited, reports that Ivan did not disrupt vessel activities in any way. He said, "We finished working all the vessels before Thursday afternoon and under the normal scheme of things that particular weekend would have been a light one."
The exception was one lost call on Sunday when a vessel did not make its usual Sunday call at the port of Kingston. "This was the only irregularity in operations," the Kingston Wharves operations manager pointed out. Nonetheless, Mr. Mitchell admitted that the hurricane did cause delays in the general delivery of cargo to customers in the freight department.
In spite of the delays, both entities suffered no damage to the physical infrastructure as a result of Ivan.
