Change is in the wind.

BYLINE: Rick Eyerdam

Mexico emerges, Maersk slips and Crowley dominates

A subtle change occurred in Florida's container trade lanes from April 2006 to March 2007 as the hemisphere's two major free-trade accords and the growth of transshipment challenged China's lead for import containers and Port Everglades surpassed Miami in containerized export throughput.

Miami maintained a strong edge on the import side with a 48 percent market share, despite a 5.8 percent decline in volume to 412,772 TEUs.

Puerto Cortes, Honduras, was the leading beneficiary of containers shipped to Florida ports with a 10.6 percent market share. Freeport, Bahamas, the major transshipment hub for Mediterranean Shipping Co., and Santo Thomas de Castilla in Guatemala followed with a 5.1 percent share of the market. Both were slightly ahead of Hong Kong.

On the import side, mainland China's market share grew by 13.3 percent to almost 18 percent of containers imported into Florida with 153,411 TEUs. Honduras lagged far behind in second place with an 8.8 percent market share. This represented a 6.3 percent decline in container imports from Honduras since Florida Shipper's last report covering the comparable 2005-06 interval, according to research compiled from PIERS Global Intelligence Solutions, sister company of Florida Shipper.

Crowley rules again The latest Florida ocean cargo container carriers' import and export numbers are clear-cut and absent ambiguity. Crowley Liner Services remains the top ocean cargo carrier with export container volume exceeding the total import and export volume of second-place Seaboard Marine or fourth-ranked Maersk Line and every other carrier in the top 10.

Crowley carried 138,830 international containers from Florida ports in the April 2006-March 2007 period, and another 125,504 export containers in the Jones Act trade to Puerto Rico, for a total export volume of 264,334 TEUs in the period.

By comparison, Maersk, the fourth-ranked ocean cargo carrier on the Florida list, handled 154,458 TEUs of containerized imports and exports. Crowley's import-export total at Florida ports …