Panama Canal – Good news for US East Coast ports

Container traffic from Asia to the US could move from West Coast ports to East Coast ports by 2020, following the opening of the expanded Panama Canal, according to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and CH Robinson.

In a new research report entitled ‘Wide Open: How the Panama Canal Is Redrawing the Logistics Map’, the companies’ say that up to 10% of cargo could be rerouted to the East Coast, a volume equivalent to building a port roughly double the size of Savannah or Charleston.

The research, claimed to be the most comprehensive public study of how the canal’s expansion could change the way cargo moves, either by water and land, into and within the US, was based on extensive scenario analyses of differing levels of demand, capacity, and costs.