AAPA and MARAD team up for survey focused on identifying port cargo handling needs

Late last week, the American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA) and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration (MARAD) announced they are partnering up to launch a survey of port authorities and marine terminal operators, with a focus on identifying the national port cargo handling needs over the next five-to-ten years.

Entitled the “Building American Production Capacity for Electric Port Equipment and Other Port Infrastructure Items,” AAPA and MARAD said that this initiative is expected to be completed this spring, with a final report to be released this summer.

What’s more, AAPA and MARAD said that through interviews with ports and U.S. manufacturers, this effort will assess the interest and capability of American and foreign manufacturers to produce cargo handling equipment and other relevant port equipment domestically. And it added that this project will also assess the feasibility of a pooled procurement model for sourcing electrically powered port equipment and port items.

“Given the shortage of American-manufactured equipment to handle cargo and the industry-led push to electrify operations in response to a changing climate, the U.S. must build a domestic capacity for manufacturing clean, electrically powered American cargo handling equipment as an alternative to existing, predominantly foreign sources,” said AAPA and MARAD in a statement. “This announcement is welcome news for the port industry after many months of bureaucratic review and delay.”

AAPA Director of Government Relations Derek Miller told LM that there were various drivers for AAPA and MARAD to launch this survey.

“Domestic preference requirements like those contained in the Build America, Buy America Act restrict federal grant recipients from spending key grant funds on foreign made materials and equipment,” explained Miller. “Unfortunately, large cargo handling equipment—like cranes—for ports is almost exclusively manufactured overseas. Thanks to a significant increase in infrastructure funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, ports want to spend grant funds upgrading their equipment, so the survey was developed as a part of a larger effort to incentivize domestic manufacturing.”

Miller added that the survey was conceived and drafted in early 2023, noting that due to some bureaucratic delays, it unfortunately spent the second half of 2023 under various levels of government review.

When asked what the key objectives of the survey are, Miller said it was designed to develop a comprehensive picture of port cargo handling equipment demand in the short- and medium-term and simultaneously assess the capacity and interest of existing manufacturers to expand their product lines to include some of this equipment, and to assess the cost to do so.

“Two key steps will be accomplished by this survey,” said Miller. “First, we will gathering national data on demand and then examine the current manufacturing base. The logical next step after we have a comprehensive picture, will be to incentivize manufacturing by working with Congress and the Biden Administration to provide things like funding, preferential status, and allow for group procurement.”

As for the number of stakeholders expected to participate in the survey, Miller said that AAPA will ask its roughly 80 U.S. port members to participate as well, as all marine terminal operators with a presence at U.S. ports, adding he expects most of them to respond.