SM Shipping Marks 2nd Anniversary of Portland Service in the US... Strengthening Support for Export Shippers

The export container carried by the SM Ningbo Ho is being unloaded at the Portland terminal in the United States.

[Asia Economy Reporter Dongwoo Lee] SM Line announced on the 23rd that it has marked the 2nd anniversary of its container shipping service between Asia and Portland, USA.

This is a North American West Coast route that SM Line launched on December 23, 2019, to develop a new service differentiated from other shipping companies. A 4,300 TEU-class vessel calls weekly at Ningbo-Shanghai-Busan-Vancouver-Seattle-Portland in sequence, serving as a core route for SM Line alongside the South American West Coast route, which calls at Long Beach and Oakland.

Since the service began, up to November this year, SM Line has transported approximately 54,000 TEU (1 TEU = one 20-foot container) of containers between Korea and Portland, USA, over two years. The number of vessel deployments on this route has reached about 100 voyages.

The main cargo includes automobile parts, batteries, chemical products, furniture, home appliances, cosmetics, and foodstuffs, contributing to the activation of trade between Korea and Oregon, USA. In 2019, Kate Brown, Governor of Oregon, USA, personally visited SM Line's headquarters in Korea to discuss the route launch.

Portland Port in the USA had seen a halt in calls by global container shipping companies since 2017, but with SM Line's service launch, it has regained attention as a logistics gateway in the Northwestern United States. For Korean and American companies that previously relied on ports like Seattle and Tacoma for cargo import and export, this service offers an attractive option to reduce transportation time and costs.

Especially after the logistics crisis caused by COVID-19, while major West Coast ports such as LA and Long Beach have experienced severe congestion, Portland Port has the advantage of almost no such delays. The waiting time for vessels to enter terminals is short, fast unloading operations are possible, and cargo can be immediately transferred to rail for inland shipment to places thousands of kilometers away, such as Chicago, making it an emerging attractive logistics supply chain solution.

SM Line plans to continue strengthening its services. In July this year, the company signed a long-term three-year contract with the Portland Port Authority, laying the foundation for stable service provision, and plans to expand cooperation with Union Pacific, the largest railroad company in the USA, for inland transportation. Additionally, in the second half of this year, SM Line added one 4,300 TEU-class container vessel to the route, naming it the ‘SM Portland’.

CEO Kihoon Park stated, “Next year, we plan to continuously expand our business areas, including strengthening inland transportation services in the USA, and we will make every effort to support domestic exporters as a national shipping company without any setbacks.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.