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May 30, 2023

First cargoes on the Duluth

DULUTH — The first regular liner service in decades to include the Port of

DULUTH — The first regular liner service in decades to include the Port of Duluth-Superior is underway.

The service's first ship, the 453-foot-long UAL Fortitude, arrived in Duluth on May 13. Dutch shipping company Spliethoff is expected to send monthly ocean-going cargo ships between Duluth and Antwerp, Belgium, through the shipping season. The ship is expected to reach Antwerp on June 5, according to MarineTraffic.com.

The Fortitude arrived in Duluth carrying a futuristic German tractor likely destined for a Midwest farm, containers filled with minerals in super sacks, and power plant equipment headed to Washington.

"I think the cool thing about that is it really demonstrates the geographic reach we have … something coming from Europe, it's using the Seaway to get all the way into the farthest inland port to cut down on the land transportation and make it over to Washington State," said Jonathan Lamb, president of Duluth Cargo Connect, a partnership between the public Duluth Seaway Port Authority and the private Lake Superior Warehousing.

"If we have that type of a draw to access Washington State, I think that's pretty telling what we can do in the future and how the service can grow," Lamb said. He's also hopeful more local and regional companies use it to send products to Europe.

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Instead of needing enough product to fill an entire ship, multiple companies can take space on the same ship with much smaller volumes in containers. The ships will also be able to handle bulk cargo and equipment.

Among the exports the Fortitude will bring to Europe: oil and gas equipment from Alberta, Canada, and various containerized cargoes, including one full of Amsoil automotive lubricants.

Adam Tindall-Schlicht, administrator of the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corp., sees this type of shipping as the future.

"Containerization via maritime is the next great chapter in new cargo being handled on the Great Lakes," he said.

Historically, the Port of Duluth-Superior has handled bulk cargoes like iron ore pellets, grain, salt, coal and limestone. But after the Clure Public Marine Terminal was upgraded, it began to handle containers via ship, truck and rail.

Now, the only other Great Lakes port offering container services is Cleveland, but Tindall-Schlicht expects it could expand to ports near Chicago or Monroe, Michigan.

"This is really presenting a new trade lane, one that is going to be really important for the North American maritime economy as supply chains continue to emerge from COVID-related contrition," Tindall-Schlicht said.

Amsoil, the Superior-based manufacturer of synthetic oils, has been facing those pandemic-induced supply chain challenges. Namely, congestion at coastal ports.

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"The past 24 months or so have been a challenge to just move anything through the port system," said Tom Pelland, Amsoil's director of distribution and logistics.

Usually, containers from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area are sent up to Superior, where Amsoil loads them and then sends the containers back down to the Twin Cities. There, the containers are placed on a train and taken to a port on either the west or east coast, where they are loaded onto a ship.

But the monthly liner service saves a few steps. The ship is loaded in Duluth and unloaded in Antwerp. The containers are then taken by truck to nearby Rotterdam, Netherlands, where Amsoil has a third-party logistics company that its distributors can order pallet quantities from.

"Being able to utilize the inland port of Duluth certainly eliminates a lot of those touch points between here and the coast to get that thing on the ocean and get it moving hopefully more efficiently than the traditional method we’ve used," Pelland said.

And it is likely faster. The old process could take up to 45-60 days, but Spliethoff has said a one-way voyage between Duluth and Antwerp can take 20-25 days.

Amsoil is likely to send more containers on the next outbound vessel. It's also considering receiving materials on the inbound ships because one of its chemical manufacturers is in Antwerp.

"It looks like it is going to go both ways for us," said Matthew Dixon, Amsoil's vice president of logistics and supply chain. "Which is very exciting."

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