Cargo Operations: Cleveland, Davisville

Lubrizol Begins Exporting to Europe through Port of Cleveland

The Lubrizol Corporation has begun exporting container loads of specialty chemicals to Europe via the Port of Cleveland and the Cleveland-Europe Express (CEE) service.

"As a major exporter from Northeast Ohio, we are excited to now have this option to ship directly from the Port of Cleveland, eliminating the overland segment to East Coast ports," said Matthew Joyce, Lubrizol’s Director of Supply Chain Americas. We fully support this concept as a way to help Heartland producers reach global markets more efficiently and compete more effectively".

The CEE service, a partnership between the Port of Cleveland and the Spliethoff Group of The Netherlands, is the only scheduled ocean service between the Great Lakes, Europe and points beyond.

 "We are extremely pleased Lubrizol is now a customer of the Cleveland-Europe Express," said Port President and CEO Will Friedman. As a world leader in the specialty chemicals industry and a leading global company based in Northeast Ohio, Lubrizol is exactly the type of Ohio exporter we aimed to serve. While it is still early, this is a critical milestone for the Cleveland-Europe service".

In conjunction with the Lubrizol announcement, the port officially commissioned two new mobile harbor cranes. Manufactured in England and costing $5.6 million for the pair, each crane has a lifting capacity of 84 metric tons.  Funding came from a federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) grant.

Said Mr. Friedman said, "These cranes and other investments at the port allow us to compete for and win business like Lubrizol’s. Global commerce demands high productivity and these machines, when operated by our skilled longshoremen, deliver the results".

 
New mobile harbor crane at work at the Port of Cleveland
Photo/Port of Cleveland

Rhode Island's Largest Windmill Shipment Ever Arrives at Davisville

The Port of Davisville has been one of the Top Ten auto-importers in North America. For several years, however, the port has been pursuing additional shipping opportunities.  

Those efforts paid off with the May 10 arrival at the port of a vessel carrying Rhode Island's largest shipment of wind turbines ever. The shipment totaling some 2,600 tons consisted of components for ten turbines, including more than 30 tower pieces, 30 blades, ten nacelles, ten generators, and more than 30 tower pieces. All were unloaded within three days.

The importer, Wind Energy Development, is leasing an open parcel of land within the Quonset Business Park for storing the turbines before erecting them in the towns of Coventry and Portsmouth. Having additional space for the staging and storage of deliveries of this magnitude is a key selling point to shippers, the port says.

During the past few years the port's specialty cargo business has grown to include timber piles, sonar equipment, and new wind turbine components, among other things.

The Port of Davisville is a component of the Quonset Business Park, which is owned and managed by Quonset Development Corporation, an agency of the state of Rhode Island. 


Offloading wind turbine components at the Port of Davisville
Photo/Quonset Development Corporation