Manzanillo International Terminal on Panama's Caribbean coast (text of audio follows photo)
Photo: Manzanillo International Terminal

Narrator

On the Atlantic side, Stevedoring Services of America has built a one-hundred twenty million dollar container terminal that in less than two years has attracted most of the biggest steamship lines. Andy MacLauchlan is managing director of Manzanillo International Terminal:

Andy McLauchlan

We built the facility in 16 months, which is very quick for any facility around the world. And in less than a year and a half of operation, we're moving about 30,000 containers a month. Which is now at near capacity, and we've started our second phase of construction.

There were very few container terminals and all were generally very expensive and also had very low productivity, in Panama and generally throughout Latin America. And so we developed a terminal that has world-class standards. The vessels come in, unload, load, and move on very quickly, which is required when operating these big vessels.

So what we saw was, it was a natural intersection of the major East-West North-South trade. And the Canal and the activity through the Canal is very similar to, let's say, the Straits of Malacca in Asia and Singapore. You've got the major trading routes with vessels going by and it only makes sense to provide that type of productive facility in those locations.

Narration and interviews by Peter Costantini