By Molly Parker
SCBIZ Daily Staff

Despite a 10% drop in container volume, the S.C. State Ports Authority said Thursday it achieved record revenue and earnings in the fiscal year that ended June 30.

Operating revenues increased 7.6% to $165 million, operating expenses rose 6.6% to $110 million and earnings increased 9.7% to $54.7 million, the SPA reported. Container traffic totaled 1,694,504 20-foot equivalent units, compared with 1,883,651 TEUs the previous fiscal year.

This marked the second year of declining traffic volume for the SPA. The authority blamed the decline on a “weaker import market” and “stiff competition from subsidized ports along the East Coast.”

The dip in the authority’s main business, importing and exporting cargo containers, prompted S.C. Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell to suggest earlier this month that the SPA study privatization options such as the landlord-tenant model.

In most ports across the country, a government agency owns much of the infrastructure and land and a private company operates the terminal using union labor.

As part of that discussion, McConnell also questioned whether the port would have enough money to build a 1.5-mile road connecting Interstate 26 to the 280-acre terminal under construction on the former Navy base in North Charleston.

State and federal lawmakers already have signed off on $182.5 million for the access road. But the SPA, in announcing its year-end balances, said it would be able to make up any differences should it cost more.

“The Ports Authority won’t need additional taxpayer funding from the General Assembly for either the port access road or the new Navy Base Terminal,” SPA board chairman David Posek said in a statement.

The SPA also said it will be able to come up with the $7.9 million in state match funds required to close out the deepening and widening project for the Charleston Harbor. This project, completed in 2004, brought the channel to 45 feet deep at mean low water and the entrance channel to 47 feet deep.

“From a financial standpoint, South Carolina’s public port system is very healthy,” Posek said.