Port Hueneme Diverts Citrus Headed for Kobe, Averts Loss

Ventura County’s busy little deep-water port, the Port of Hueneme, narrowly escaped feeling a financial pinch due to the earthquake that crippled shipping facilities at Kobe, Japan.

Cool Carriers (USA) Inc., based in Port Hueneme, which shipped more than 50 million pounds of Sunkist citrus fruit to Kobe last year, had diverted its vessels to Sakai, across Kobe Bay, and so didn’t suffered any losses in the quake, reports Jerry Fountain, Cool’s president.

“Sakai is very close to Kobe, only about 25 miles away, but somehow it had very little damage,” Fountain said. He said shipments to Kobe normally represent about 20% of Cool’s shipments to Japan. Last year, Cool carried 8.6 million cartons, or about 340 million pounds of Sunkist products, from Hueneme to Japan.

Other exporters from the Ventura County port use other Japanese destinations so they weren’t affected by the quake either, said Bill Buenger, executive director of the Port of Hueneme.

Few imports to this country passed through Kobe, port officials said. Mostly, Hueneme imports autos from Europe and Japan, and bananas from Latin America.

Then there’s the Medfly crisis, which placed a quarantine on much of the fruit that’s normally exported through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

“It’s probably done us more good than harm,” Buenger noted. “We’re getting some additional business that formerly went to L.A. or Long Beach. If fruit wasn’t grown in a Medfly area, exporters can avoid the quarantine by shipping through Hueneme.”

Even though the fruit-destroying pests have been found in orchards in the Camarillo area, authorities haven’t ordered a quarantine at Hueneme, he said.

As for the recent storms, Buenger said that despite damage experienced by some growers, he doesn’t expect a major reduction in this year’s California citrus crop. “Lemons, oranges and grapefruit are our main exports. So far, we’ve seen no interruption in those shipments, and we don’t expect any.”

Fountain, of Cool Carriers, whose company uses a dockside refrigerated terminal at Hueneme, expects to increase its exports from the port by a million cartons this year. A carton holds about 40 pounds of fruit.

That would bring Cool’s exports from Hueneme to 9.6 million cartons in 1995 and would increase total port volume to nearly 15 million cartons of citrus.