Cargo shipments between Honolulu and six neighbor island ports rose slightly in 2012, helped by a solid gain in the fourth-quarter volumes, according to a report issued Thursday by Young Bros. Ltd., the state’s main interisland shipping company.
Shipments rose 2 percent in the fourth quarter, continuing a sawtooth pattern of gains and losses that persisted throughout the year. For all of 2012 shipping volumes were up 0.4 percent from 2011.
"This year was a bit of a seesaw, but it’s always good to carry positive momentum into the new year," said Glenn Hong, president of Young Bros. "We’d like to see the volume trend line sustain a modest positive direction for a change. We have some optimism, but clearly cargo volumes have a ways to go to demonstrate a continued growth trend," he said.
The cargo data were included in the Young Bros. quarterly shipping report. The report tracks cargo volumes using a standard unit of measurement called "container/platform equivalents." Young Bros. uses the CPE measurement so it can compare cargo volumes across different sizes of containers.
For the October-through-December period the volume of cargo from Honolulu to six neighbor island ports totaled 31,917 CPEs, up 2 percent from 31,287 CPEs in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Hong said shipments of agricultural products continued their positive trend, rising 13.7 percent in the fourth quarter. For the full year agricultural shipments rose 11.6 percent. Young Bros. provides a discount of 30 percent to 35 percent for locally produced agricultural products.
Separately, Young Bros. this week requested approval from the Public Utilities Commission to streamline the setting of shipping rates.
The company is proposing a mechanism in which it would file a general rate case with the PUC once every three years. In the two years in between, the rates would automatically adjust up or down according to shipping volumes using benchmarks set in the general rate case.
The proposed program, called the Annual Freight Adjustment Pilot Program, is designed to save both the company and the PUC time and resources, said Roy Catalani, vice president for strategic planning and government relations at Young Bros.
If approved by the PUC, the new system could go into effect as early as July 1, he said.
