Lowe’s exec sees Port of Nansha providing savings of time, money for shipments from South China
August 18, 2017 – Lowe’s Companies Inc.’s director of international transportation, Todd Zaninelli, is among a growing number of leading North American import executives who see Port of Nansha offering time and cost savings for shipments from South China’s industrial core.
“Overall, we see an increasing amount of volume creeping away from Shenzhen and around to the west side of the Pearl River Delta,” Zaninelli told the American Journal of Transportation. “We see there being an opportunity for ocean carriers to differentiate themselves by using Nansha in a rotation for direct U.S. West Coast and East Coast calls.”
Indeed, even without a direct container service yet in place to the U.S. East Coast, the Guangzhou Port Group and its Port of Nansha have quickly ascended to No. 7 ranking among world ports as measured by container volume, with a 2016 throughput of nearly 18.9 million 20-foot-equivalent units.
Nansha is being promoted as the fastest-growing container port in the South China, with its TEU count up 8 percent last year from 2015, while Hong Kong’s TEUs dropped 2.7 percent and Shenzhen container activity slipped 0.9 percent. Hong Kong’s port, ranked No. 5 worldwide, with almost 19.6 million TEUs handled in 2016, is now within Nansha’s striking distance in the rankings, while Shenzhen, with 2016 volume of just shy of 24 million TEUs, is cemented in the No. 3 spot.
Direct U.S. East Coast service, via the expanded Panama Canal, is not far off for Nansha, according to John L. Painter, president and chief executive officer of the port’s North American arm, Wyckoff, New Jersey-based Guangzhou Port America LLC.