Portland: The Port of Portland rolled out the red carpet yesterday for a very special arrival – a containership, something not seen on these shores since early April.
ICTSI Oregon, which operates the container terminal at the Port of Portland and is a subsidiary of Manila-headquartered International Container Terminal Services (Inc), welcomed a ship from Westwood Shipping.
Earlier this year the US west coast port lost 95% of its box business when Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd and South Korea’s Hanjin Shipping pulled out due to a protracted labour dispute at the port.
Only Westwood is left at the container terminal, a small operator with just a handful of services.
The port sits on the confluence of two major rivers the Columbia and the Willamette.
Shipping may be down in Portland, but how many kilt-wearing, unicycle riding bagpipers wearing Darth Vader helmets do you have in Dalian? And do their pipes shoot fire as they play the Star Wars theme, as do those of our beloved Unipiper?
Portland!
I rest my case.
JSB
Joshua, an author for Lonely Planet, will be putting the case for Portland in the next travel page for Maritime CEO magazine due out shortly