Mediterranean Shipping Co. growing its local presence, adding weekly call

Mediterranean Shipping Co. is digging in its heels in Charleston, continuing to grow its local presence while other shipping companies are cutting back.

S.C. State Ports Authority Board Chairman David Posek announced Wednesday that the world’s second-largest shipping company would add a weekly call on Charleston starting June 9.

That will bring the company’s weekly calls on the Port of Charleston to six, surpassing by two the number of calls that Maersk Line now makes here.

Maersk, for years the port’s largest customer, has dropped its weekly calls here from seven to four in recent months. The Danish company, the world’s largest steamship line, announced late last year it would leave Charleston when its contract with the SPA expiree at the end of 2010.

Negotiations are ongoing to keep Maersk in town.

“I think we’ve given them an offer they will find acceptable,” Posek said Wednesday afternoon, speaking to a lunch crowd at the S.C. International Trade Conference.

That event, organized by a nonprofit board of volunteers, drew about 350 people to Charleston from the Carolinas this week for sessions on trade policy, the economy and business development.

Posek discussed the stark challenges facing the ports authority — container volume started “falling off the cliff” in September — but it’s not all gloom and doom, he said.

Among the positive events unfolding, Mediterranean Shipping is quickly being cast in a new starring role with the Port of Charleston. The privately owned company’s new service that starts in a little more than a week will add 52 ship calls to the more than 200 calls the company already makes in Charleston. Recently, the ports authority announced it had inked a new deal with Mediterranean Shipping, extending the company’s contract through 2017.

The Geneva-based company also has expanded its South Atlantic headquarters in Mount Pleasant, opening a new 45,000-square-foot building in March. The company expects to eventually add several hundred new employees.

Mediterranean Shipping carries goods between the Port of Charleston and the west Mediterranean, South America, the Caribbean, Africa and Europe.

The new trade service announced Wednesday will originate from the East Coast of South America, taking goods from places such as Argentina and Brazil to the Freeport Container Port in the Bahamas and to Charleston. The trade service will then travel from Charleston to other East Coast ports in the United States, said SPA spokesman Byron Miller.

Trade between Charleston and South America’s East Coast has grown considerably in the past 15 years, Miller said. There was hardly any trade with countries there as recently as the mid-’90s.

“Those areas are dealing with economic and political challenges of their own, but there’s certainly a great opportunity for that north-south trade,” Miller said.

Posek told the group that the ports authority is finalizing its new strategic plan and will release details to the public in short order.

“We hope that basically will at least turn the corner and point us in the right direction,” he said.

The board chairman also said that the search to find a new CEO for the authority is going strong and likely to conclude in short order. And he applauded the commitment of businesses that make up the maritime industry.

“Our port system is critical for the long-term success of this state,” Posek said.