Tampa port container shipping may triple in three years

Tampa port officials predict their fledgling container shipping business will triple over the next three years.

Port director Richard Wainio ticked off reasons for optimism Wednesday in a briefing for port commissioners: Demand for consumer goods shipped from Asia in containers remains strong. The port's major container shipper will bring a bigger vessel next month, he said, and another within a year.

We're not talking pie in the sky here at all, Wainio said.

In recent years, the Tampa Port Authority invested $45-million in a new terminal and three hulking gantry cranes to jump-start its trade in containerized cargo, for decades the fastest-growing segment of the shipping business.

Officials expect to finish the current fiscal year ending Sept. 30 with movements of just more than 42,000 Twenty-foot Equivalent Units, or TEUs — a standard measure that counts a 20-foot-long box as one unit and a 40-foot-long box as two.

Tampa Port Authority officials project the total will grow to 60,000 in the coming year and 125,000 three years from now. By contrast, Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale handles nearly 1-million TEUs and Savannah, the Southeast's biggest container port, handles 2.6-million TEUs.

Still, Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio was impressed, recalling the port moved a paltry 3,000 containers when she first ran for office in 2003. Reaching 125,000 TEUs would represent the single greatest aspect of economic development in our county, she said.

Officials also projected that 16.4-million tons of cargo will cross over publicly owned docks in the coming fiscal year, an 11-percent increase year-to-year. Some 793,000 cruise passengers are expected to use the port, up 3 percent from this year.

Also on Wednesday, Hillsborough County Commissioner Brian Blair's proposal to phase out the port authority's property tax on the county landowners fell flat. None of the other six port commissioners voiced support.