Waiver could propel short-sea shipping from Port of Green Bay; Fewer taxes expected to bring more international cargo to city
December 26, 07 by TheFleetIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
By Nathan Phelps | Source: Green Bay Press-Gazette
The port — and the Great Lakes — could see another evolution in the coming years as the concept of short-sea shipping takes hold and as fees that have discouraged the practice on some types of cargo are re-examined.
Dean Haen, director of the Port of Green Bay, said one of the factors that has limited short-sea shipping on the Great Lakes is taxes levied on cargo each time a ship stops in a port. The government is looking at a possible waiver of that tax on some cargos, which could make expanded short-sea shipping a viable option on the lakes.
“It would allow ships to be able to stop port-to-port-to-port,” he said. “Right now, the way it’s set up with the Harbor Maintenance Tax, every time that ship would stop, it would have to pay tax on everything on board. So if you’re the fourth stop in a route, your cargo will have been taxed four times.”
Right now, about 10 percent of the cargo coming through Green Bay is international.
“But I think with short-sea shipping, you will see that change,” Haen said. “You could have containers coming in on an ocean-going vessel to, say, Montreal, and that ship would be unloaded onto feeder vessels, where those containers would then come right to Green Bay.”
That could offer a transportation savings instead of sending product to an East Coast port, then sending it by train to Chicago, and then trucking it Green Bay, he said.
