Oswego County Business Magazine

Wednesday November 30, 2016

First Container Shipment to Arrive at Oswego Port

Future shipments will support the state’s burgeoning craft-brewing industry

By Lou Sorendo

The Spliethoff vessel MV Qamutik

The Port of Oswego Authority will make history on Tuesday.

The first container shipment to the port will arrive at a yet-to-be determined time in the afternoon, according to The Great Lakes Seaway Partnership.

The port is headquartered at 1 E. Second St., Oswego.

The Spliethoff vessel MV Qamutik will be bringing machinery and brewery equipment from Germany to the port for delivery to Rochester.

Additional shipments of this type are scheduled for spring and are destined for Fulton and other central New York microbreweries, according to the partnership.

“The importance of this container call is lower costs to local businesses who import and export goods,” said Laura Blades, director of public affairs for the partnership.

Zelko Kirincich, executive director and CEO of the port, and Terrence Hammill, port board director, have been pursuing containerization for several years.

Containerization is a system of intermodal freight transport using intermodal containers — also called shipping containers and ISO containers — made of weathering steel.

Kirinich has said containerization will increase tonnage, particularly involving agricultural products, and will mean added value and higher-end cargo. Space for additional cargo has been accommodated by the creation of the Oswego Intermodal Center, located at the former site of the FitzGibbons Boiler Co. plant on the east side of Oswego.

The Port of Oswego is the first U.S. port of call and deep-water port on the Great Lakes from the St. Lawrence Seaway.

The port’s strategic location puts it less than 350 miles from 60 million people. The port annually handles products that include aluminum; a variety of grains such as corn, wheat and soybeans, salt, fertilizer, petroleum products, cement, nuclear power plant components and windmill parts.

The port has been the recipient of 14 Pacesetter Awards — an honor extended by the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation to those Great Lakes ports that aggressively market international exports and imports.