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Its busy port has always been an indispensable part of Grand Cayman Island’s ec­on­omy. The port handled app­roximately 1,700 20-foot equivalent units monthly and 216,000 tons of freight in all of 2010. “The majority of the imports is general cargo, because everyone’s food and everything has to be imported – minimal items are produced here,” Manager of Port Op­er­ations Willem (Will) Jacobs says. “It’s the only way of products getting in and out of the island other than air cargo.

“There are tankers that bring in fuel for cars, diesel for industry and avgas for aviation,” he points out. “All the power company’s generators run off of diesel, so you can imagine the amount of diesel imported is pretty high. We don’t have refineries here, so it all has to come in by tanker.”

The port also has achieved fame as a cruise ship destination. On any day, from two to five cruise ships might be in port. “Our season for cruise ships is really October through the end of April,” Jacobs notes. In summer, many of the cruise ships return to European and northern locations for the warm weather there.

Balancing these two functions – cargo handling and tourism – has been achieved as simply as the difference between night and day. Ships are worked and trucking done at night – when it also is a little cooler – and cruise ships dock with their passengers during the day.

Tidy With IT

IT technology and handheld computer terminals have streamlined the port’s operation so that the location of any container can be determined by entering its bar code as soon as it is un­loaded from the ship. “We call it Port Manager – a custom system developed by the port and Klein Systems Group up in Vancouver,” Jacobs says. “Klein has done a lot of work for other ports worldwide. They and us developed this system, and it’s really been a major improvement for us. It manages everything for us – it does all our vessel sched­uling, vessel, container, cargo tracking, and all our billing.”

The change from a manual to an auto­mated system has been a dramatic im­provement. “It does all our tracking live,” Jacobs reports. “Within seconds of a con­tainer coming off the vessel, it is scann­ed, entered into a handheld and it is actually live in our system. Containers can be delivered within minutes of them coming off the vessel. Our turnaround time on vessels is amazing – most of the perishables are collected within 15 to 20 minutes of coming off the vessel, and they are gone and at the grocery stores and importers.”

The tracking continues in storage. “Every movement of a container and cargo is scanned every time so we know exactly where every piece of cargo is inside our warehouse,” Jacobs emphasizes. But it wasn’t always that way. “I remember people telling me they would come to the warehouse in the morning, and finally it’s found a couple hours later. They spent most of the morning there. Now with our system, you can get an email as soon as the cargo comes out of the container. Once you know it’s out, you come and get it, and within minutes, you’re done.”

Night Owls

With its fleet of 12 trucks, the port can unload and load a vessel in four to five hours, Jacobs estimates. “We have anywhere from five to eight trucks running, and we have a couple spares,” he says. “That’s enough to keep movement going continuously. If the vessels arrive on time, it really doesn’t take us long to turn around a vessel.” The port’s trucks have 40-foot chassis that can carry two 20-foot containers.

Cargo is stored at a container yard and warehouse a mile away, not at the port. This is to eliminate congestion from people retrieving their shipments at the port during the day when the cruise ships are active. “You can imagine the amount of traffic that would create if we were working daytime,” Ja­cobs points out. “The fact that we work at nighttime means a truck can do a round trip in about 12 minutes vs. daytime, when it could take as much as 30 minutes. So when the guys get off at five in the morning, by that time all the containers have been moved, the dock has been cleaned and it is ready for the cruise ship side.”

Supporting Itself

Although the port is a statutory authority owned by the government of the Cayman Islands and run by an appointed board of directors, it is self-supporting. “We fall under the umbrella of government, but we are a self-standing entity,” Jacobs explains. “We do our own budgeting, and we have our own payables. The port charges fees for the vessels, the amount of containers coming in and any usage of the dock. There is a trucking fee and the handling fees that are also charged to the consignee. So there are numerous fees that the port charges to the vessel operator and importers of goods. That is how we generate most of our income. There is a head fee or passenger fee for each cruise ship passenger. So there are numerous areas the port generates income from.”

The fee structure has remained consistent, in spite of the economy. “Fees are staying pretty much the same,” Jacobs maintains. “We just had a restructuring of some of our fees last year, but before that, it was seven to eight years before any fees were changed. They don’t change too often.”

The amount of cargo moving through the port has been decreasing during the economic slowdown, from 329,000 tons of freight in 2007 to 216,000 tons in 2010. “So the port needs to be creative in ways that we can either save money or continue to generate income,” Jacobs notes. “One of the things we have done is instead of laying off people and cutting back on our staff, we have cut back on the amount of time that we are open.” The port’s employees had their work schedules reduced so 2.5 hours per week in pay was saved per employee. For those working on the dock, hours were shortened by one hour.

For the future, Jacobs sees continuing reliance on technology. “We now allow clearing of the cargo over the Internet, so people don’t need to come into the office anymore,” he announces. “All tracking and everything is available online. We are planning on improving our system even more. We want to replace our current handheld system with a more up-to-date one that offers a lot more features with the handheld terminals. We will go with a newer terminal or tablets or something else, but we do want to improve on that. There is so much more that we can do, so we are continuously looking at ways for us to use technology for us to improve our service level.”