A Georgia seaport becomes the largest US automobile port, surpassing Baltimore
Georgia Ports Authority CEO Griff Lynch made the announcement during a luncheon speech in Brunswick, a small coastal city of 15,000 that state officials have turned into a leading gateway for automobile imports and exports as well as farm and construction equipment.
Brunswick's port moved 841,000 cars and trucks across its docks in the 2024 calendar year. That's an increase of more than 13% over the previous year. Lynch said the boom coincided with $262 million in improvements completed last fall that expanded Brunswick's capacity for processing and storing autos.
'That's huge. I can't believe it myself,' Lynch said in a phone interview after his speech. He added: 'This is one of those 'If you build it, they will come' situations.'
The Port of Baltimore led the U.S. in automobile imports and exports for more than a decade. But its total dropped 11% last year to fewer than 750,000 autos, said Richard Scher, a spokesman for the Maryland Port Administration.
The steep drop followed the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge last March, which shut down Baltimore's shipping channel for weeks. Trade was slowed as the waterway reopened in phases before being fully cleared in June.
In 2023, Baltimore handled a record 847,000 autos.
'We are quite certain that, if not for the Key Bridge incident, we would've had another record year last year,' Scher said in an email.
The Port of Brunswick often gets overshadowed by its larger sister port in Savannah, the fourth-busiest in the U.S. for retail goods and other commodities shipped in containers.
But Georgia officials have invested heavily in Brunswick, where Lynch said recent upgrades and expansions have caused automakers to shift business to Georgia from neighboring ports such as Charleston, South Carolina, and Jacksonville, Florida.
He noted that heavy equipment shipments jumped 160% in the past year to nearly 29,000 units as Brunswick added facilities to install accessories and perform other on-site customization to imported farm and construction equipment.
The Port of Brunswick plans further upgrades in the coming years. A new berth built for docking larger car-carrying ships is being designed and should open in 2027, Lynch said. The port is also building a new railyard that will ultimately triple its capacity for using trains to deliver cars for export.
Meanwhile, Georgia port officials are looking to Washington to fund improvements to Brunswick's shipping channel. The Army Corps of Engineers wants to widen portions of the waterway to give ships more room to turn after the South Korean freighter Golden Ray tipped over while leaving the port in 2019. Lynch said maintenance dredging is also needed to return the channel to its proper depth of up to 38 feet (11.5 meters) .
'Clearly, Baltimore was handicapped' last year, Lynch said. 'We don't want to take advantage of that. So we'll see if we maintain it in 2025.'
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Air Canada and flight attendants union resume talks for the first time since strike began
TORONTO (AP) — Air Canada and the union representing 10,000 flight attendants resumed talks late Monday for the first time since the strike began over the weekend. The strike is affecting about 130,000 travelers a day at the peak of the summer travel season. It is the first time the two sides have talked since early Saturday or late Friday. In an update to its members, the union said the airline reached out and the meeting occurred with the assistance of a mediator in Toronto. It followed the union's declaration that the flight attendants won't return to work even though the strike, now in its third day, has been declared illegal. Earlier, Air Canada said rolling cancellations would now extend Tuesday afternoon after the union defied a second return-to-work order. The country's biggest airline had said earlier that operations would resume Monday evening but the union president said that won't happen. 'We will not be returning to the skies,' said Mark Hancock, national president for Canadian Union of Public Employees, or CUPE, which also represents some non-public sectors. Defying a second return-to-work order The Canada Industrial Relations Board had declared the strike illegal Monday and ordered the flight attendants back on the job. But the union said it would defy the directive. Union leaders also ignored a weekend order to submit to binding arbitration and end the strike by Sunday afternoon. The board, an independent administrative tribunal that interprets and applies Canada's labor laws, had said the union needed to provide written notice to all of its members by noon Monday that they must resume their duties. 'If it means folks like me going to jail, then so be it. If it means our union being fined, then so be it,' Hancock said. 'We're looking for a solution here. Our members want a solution here, but solution has to be found at the bargaining table.' It was not immediately clear what recourse the board or the government have if the union continues to refuse. Labor leaders are objecting to the Canadian government's repeated use of a law that cuts off workers' right to strike and forces them into arbitration, a step the government took in recent years with workers at ports, railways and elsewhere. 'We are in a situation where literally hundreds of thousands of Canadians and visitors to our country are being disrupted by this action,' Prime Minister Mark Carney said. 'I urge both parties to resolve this as quickly as possible.' Carney stressed it was important that flight attendants were compensated fairly at all times. Air Canada operates around 700 flights per day. The airline estimated Monday that 500,000 customers would be affected by flight cancellations. Aviation analytics firm Cirium said that as of Monday afternoon, Air Canada had called off at least 1,219 domestic flights and 1,339 international flights since last Thursday, when the carrier began gradually suspending its operations ahead of the strike and lockout. Air Canada chief executive Michael Rousseau said he still was looking for a quick resolution. 'We're obviously hoping we can go tomorrow, but we'll make that decision later today,' Rousseau said on BNN Bloomberg shortly after the union announced it would continue with the strike. Disrupted tourists, stranded passengers Montreal resident Robert Brzymowski has been stranded in Prague along with his wife and their two children since Saturday, when Air Canada canceled their flight home from what was meant to be a two-week vacation visiting relatives. Brzymowski, who consults businesses on energy-efficient practices, said he was set to start a new job Monday but lost out on the contract because he wasn't back in Montreal in time. 'I wasn't planning on losing my job over vacation,' he said. Frustrated by what he described as a lack of communication from the airline, Brzymowski said he went to the airport in Prague on Monday morning and was able to get the airline to book them a new flight on Aug. 25 — more than a week after their original flight. He said his children will also miss the first day of the new school year, and his wife won't get paid for the week because she used the last of her paid time off for the year for this trip. 'I, for one, will never fly Air Canada again,' Brzymowski said. 'I'll take a boat if I have to.' Talks going back 8 months Flight attendants walked off the job early Saturday, after turning down the airline's request to enter into government-directed arbitration, which allows a third-party mediator to decide the terms of a new contract. Air Canada and CUPE have been in contract talks for about eight months but remain far apart on the issue of pay and the unpaid work that flight attendants do when planes aren't in the air. The airline's latest offer included a 38% increase in total compensation, including benefits and pensions, over four years, that it said 'would have made our flight attendants the best compensated in Canada.' But the union pushed back, saying the proposed 8% raise in the first year didn't go far enough because of inflation. Passengers whose flights are impacted will be eligible to request a full refund on the airline's website or mobile app, according to Air Canada.
