Port of Hueneme Managers Harbor Big Plans for Growth
When the boxes of Del Monte bananas hit the dock at the Port of Hueneme, several forklifts buzz around them like fruit flies, darting back and forth to get the bright green fruit into a storage unit. There is no idle conversation, no looking at clipboards.
And so it goes at the port’s Berth 3 for three days--230,000 boxes of bananas, 100 bananas per box. Seventy-two hours in port and then seven days, six hours and 39 minutes back to Ecuador to load up more fruit bound for stores throughout California and the West.
Though not Los Angeles or Long Beach, the two-wharf, five-berth harbor is an efficient, bustling center of commerce. It is also a port whose management has big plans for the future, plans that would allow it to expand its niche in the state’s shipping market.
More than just bananas arrive at the port. Eight types of cars from Japan, Korea and Europe are offloaded as well, along with liquid fertilizer from Norway that is then housed in three huge vats on the port’s property. Meanwhile, citrus grown locally leaves weekly for Japan.
The port quadrupled the value of its imported cargo over the last decade and is poised for further growth. About 3,000 people will be employed because of the port’s activities this year, generating $26 million in tax revenue that stays within the state, said Will Berg, spokesman for the Oxnard Harbor District.
The port ranks fourth in the state in total tonnage delivered--transporting more than 1 million general cargo tons last year.
Its gross income last year was $10.5 million, with a $1.5-million profit.
Years in the making, the port’s plans involve three components set to begin in the next few months. They include buying 12 acres of old Sunkist land for more storage units, renegotiating a lease with the adjacent Navy base for a third wharf and extending Rice Avenue to create a truck corridor for those carriers leaving the port headed for the Ventura Freeway.
“All three things tie together and we need them all,” said Berg, adding that “when the road extension comes to fruition, people will see less of the trucks” on city streets.
The port will pay almost $3 million for the Sunkist land, but the entire project will cost twice that because of city-required work, like road improvements and small renovations for the city of Port Hueneme.
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Although officials say they have not decided what they will do with the new land, the focus appears to be on automobiles, maybe a two-story parking facility for cars.
In addition, the port will deepen two berths from 35 to 40 feet to accommodate bigger ships that will carry more cars.
When a ship full of cars arrives in port, a team of drivers descends on the cargo. They drive each car from the ship to a nearby parking lot and then climb back in a van to do the whole thing again until the ship is unloaded.
Tim Schott, secretary of the California Assn. of Port Authorities, said the Port of Hueneme gives companies an appealing alternative to enormous ports such as Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland.
“Hueneme serves a critical role in the state’s port infrastructure because they offer something different to those who might otherwise have to use L.A. or Long Beach,” Schott said.
He said the rates at those two ports may get so high that companies would consider taking their goods out of state.
“Maybe they would go to Seattle or New Orleans,” he said. “Hueneme provides an option. They are a very important asset to the area, but also to the state.”
Schott and others said Hueneme’s port suffers from the same problems as others statewide--not enough room to grow.
Jesse Ramirez, president of the district’s Board of Harbor Commissioners, said the new land and docking spaces will be crucial to the port’s continued success.
International trade, he said, is increasing by 20% each year, and the port needs to be positioned to exploit the opportunity.
“In the next four years we will be working at our capacity,” he said. “I think the needs will be so great that we will have major companies saying they will pay for us to dredge another wharf. It is very expensive, but that is how it might be.”
Ramirez said some large ports soon may run out of room for smaller shippers like Chiquita and Dole. When that happens, they will come looking for another port, probably Hueneme because of the cheap rates.
“The whole issue is money,” Ramirez said.
He predicted they would flock here because their direct competition, San Diego’s port, is more than 100 miles too far south.
“If we had the land that San Diego has they would be here now,” he said. “They will come to us because of the cost and the location. The truck drivers come from the north, and who would want to send a truck all the way to San Diego?”
The port hasn’t always been so focused on attracting produce, but its roots are in that industry.
Before World War II, the port was an export point for the county’s growing agricultural industry. But after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the U.S. government annexed the harbor and converted it to military use.
In 1947, the port was returned to civilian control and for the next 30 years serviced the county’s offshore oil industry until that began to decline in the late 1970s.
Officials then started reinventing the port and its mission.
Knowing they didn’t have the space to compete with the behemoth ports in Long Beach or Los Angeles, they focused on attracting niche goods--bananas and cars.
“There are some things that would be incompatible with this port,” Berg said. “BMW would be very unhappy if we were importing piles of cement that would blow onto their cars.”
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There are some goods that need lots of “container space,” and the Port of Hueneme doesn’t have that kind of capacity because it has only 100 acres, he said.
In 1978, Del Monte set the port’s course by beginning a weekly service. Now the company is the longest-term international customer and what the port calls the key to its success.
A banana exporter would pay the port around $25,000 to dock for three days and unload a ship full of bananas in Hueneme.
In 1994, the port benefited from being designated as a Foreign Trade Zone, which allows importers to defer tariffs until they are ready to move their products to the market.
That status has pleased foreign car makers such as BMW, Jaguar, Mitsubishi and Volvo because they get to postpone payment, and sometimes make changes to the cars on the U.S. shore, before proceeding to another country.
Officials also said that car makers are partial to Hueneme’s port because the air quality here is so good.
“L.A. has a lot more smog, and that just eats away at the finish of the car,” Berg said.
The number of cars unloaded at the port climbed from 144,000 last year to 216,000 this year, an increase of almost 50%.
In 1993 the port broke ground on an $11-million, 140,000-square-foot refrigerated fruit terminal for Cool Carriers--the largest such facility on the West Coast--and in 1995 added a 40,000-square-foot refrigerated warehouse storage facility for Del Monte.
“This is a great place to work because they open their arms to us,” said Kevin Lee, Del Monte port manager.
“They are glad to have our business, and they accommodate us with things like being willing to spend more money to establish a facility that we need.”
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