Port of Los Angeles executive director Gene Seroka will discuss the Clean Air Action Plan, trade and technology at the upcoming Ports Australia Conference, to be held in Sydney from 22 September.
HIGHLIGHTING the benefits of the Port of Los Angeles Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP) will be high on the agenda when Gene Seroka speaks in Sydney in late September.
Mr Seroka is executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, the largest container port in the United States by way of volume and crucial to that nation’s economic performance.
Port of Los Angeles executive director,
Gene Seroka. Image: Supplied
Also vice president of the of the International Association of Ports and Harbors (IAPH), he is to present at the Ports Australia Biennial Conference from 22 – 24 September, discussing themes including sustainability, trade and technology.
Developed by the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in 2006, the CAAP has been credited with significantly reducing pollution.
“In our most recent emissions report, we [recorded] the lowest pollution footprint per shipment since we began measuring two decades ago,” Mr Seroka told DCN.
He says aspects of the CAAP could be transferable to ports globally, depending upon “a whole variety of aspects”, noting a shared vision among IAPH members to “make our ports and communities cleaner, safer and better to live in than ever before”.
Trade is also to be discussed, including the potentially thorny topic of tariffs.
“Part of what I will share is a bit of the ground truth about what is happening with respect to trade and the US,” Mr Seroka said.
“The areas that have worked, those that are lagging and what we see as the outlook for the world’s largest economy that has so many tentacles in trade across the world including Oceania.”
Gene Seroka has been at the helm of the Port of Los Angeles for 12 years and in that time has seen some “real advances in everything from infrastructure to digital technology”.
The Port of Los Angeles operates in some ways as a real estate agent and Gene Seroka spoke of some of the challenges, leasing their 3100 ha of property to private sector interests to advance international trade, wildlife and fisheries, retail, dining and entertainment.
“Just on the supply chain alone, we have got seven marine terminals, more than 10 shipping lines, two railroads, a short haul rail facility, and 17,000 truckers who are registered to do business at the port,” he said.
Yet when the system is working well, as he maintains it has in recent years, it “helps grow economies, create good paying jobs, build communities and drive investment, not only in infrastructure but also in these sustainable practices”.
Port of Los Angeles has brought about technological change during the past decade via the Port Optimizer Portal, a cloud-based digital portal created with Wabtec Corporation to track shipping data, manage cargo, and view terminal metrics.
The concept dated back to 2014 when it became apparent “there were many data points in the supply chain that existed but were very dispersed”.
There was no central location to find out when a ship was leaving and expected to arrive, where the cargo was connecting to, whether it be rail or truck and what size these containers were, how should the workforce prepare for ebbs and flows in cargo.
How could operations be made more responsive?
“I knew from my time working overseas after the tragic events of September 11 [2001] that US Border Protection and the private sector formed a partnership called the Customs Trade Partnership against Terrorism (CTAP).
“One of the outputs of the CTPAT initiative was what we called the 24-hour advance manifest rule. That was a way for the federal authorities in the US to examine a ship’s manifest before it left its last port,” he said.
“That was done from a national security standpoint. For us, some 12 to 14 years later, it was also about trying to understand how much cargo was coming our way.
“We worked closely with US Customs and Border Protection to gain access to this non-proprietary information. We didn’t want to know what was in the container, or how much it cost, we certainly weren’t going to share information across competitors, but if we had an idea 14 days ahead of a ship’s arrival in Los Angeles, we could be better prepared on the ground.”
The Optimizer has allowed for key early insights.
“Now we can see shipments coming in 40 days before they arrive in Los Angeles, with a really good ‘line of sight’ up to two weeks before they arrive,” he said.
“It has allowed us to really begin to ‘see around corners and over hills’ to avoid some of the complexities we witnessed before this system was developed.”