Lazaro Cardenas is a port worth watching

As if U.S. West Coast ports didn’t have enough to worry about, a new competitor is surfacing South of the Border to challenge them.

Canadian and U.S. East Coast ports have been taking business away from LA/Long Beach; Seattle/Tacoma; and Oakland for several years now. Analysts suggest that there is a number of reasons for this, but most center of efficiency and productivity.

Now the long-rumored development of the deepwater Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas is becoming a realty as APM Terminals – a division of Denmark’s A.P. Moller-Maersk Group – breaks ground for a new $900 million terminal.

Once completed in 2015, the port will provide shippers with a four-berth terminal linked to the Kansas City Southern Railroad.

Furthermore, like its northern neighbor, Prince Rupert, it is a foreign port that is not subject to the U.S. harbor maintenance tax.

Shippers may expect an aggressive response, however, as U.S. West Coast port leaders lobby Congress for a change in existing laws regarding cross-border movement of containers. The question remains: will this be too little too late?