State and city leaders welcomed the shipping company Maersk back to the Port of Baltimore on Wednesday. It was a largely ceremonial thing – the company actually started delivering to Baltimore in March, after leaving in the 1990s – but the folks gathered at Seagirt Marine Terminal said it’s a big deal for the port.
Maersk is the world’s largest container shipping company. It moves about 15 percent of the manufactured goods shipped around the globe, so it makes sense that elected officials are pretty stoked Maersk is here.
“As the port succeeds, Maryland succeeds,” Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford said. “And now Maersk is going to be here and link their success to the success of the state.”
Rutherford, who was filling in for Gov. Larry Hogan while he received chemotherapy for lymphoma, was joined by Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Transportation Secretary Pete Rahn.
In 2013, the port finished a $105 million project to construct a berth that could handle some of the biggest ships in the world – ships that Maersk makes and operates. The berth, with its 50-foot depth and giant cranes, makes Baltimore one of just two east coast ports able to receive these so-called post-Panamax mega-ships. Ports across the Eastern Seaboard are struggling to figure out how to deepen their ports to accommodate the larger ships that will be able to cross the expanded Panama Canal, which is expected to be completed next year.
“The ships have gotten so big, I don’t think anybody 10 years ago would’ve estimated the ships would be this size today,” said Port of Baltimore director Jim White.
White estimates Maersk will bring in about 30,000 new containers a year initially, or roughly 5 percent more containers than the port handled last year. He said that’s a conservative estimate.
