Port of Belize’s woes: An opportunity for the South?

Published by BBNTEAM at February 11, 2022

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Posted: Friday, February 11, 2022. 8:36 pm CST.

By Aaron Humes: Before the recent partial resolution of the standoff between the Port of Belize Limited and the Christian Workers’ Union (CWU) over the demands of stevedores, companies were giving serious consideration to, and in some cases actually starting, to move their shipping from Belize City to the Port of Big Creek near Independence.

And while with, all things considered, Belize City remains top dog, there could be opportunities for the two southern ports, Commerce Bight near Dangriga and Big Creek, to see a larger slice of the shipping pie, with the latter already confirmed to be hosting sugar exports from American Sugar Refining/Belize Sugar Industries Limited (ASR/BSI).

But Dangriga area representative Dr. Louis Zabaneh says hold your horses on a changing of the guard, although international shipping companies are starting to warm to the possibility: “In some cases they will have no choice because many of the shipping lines are making that decision on their own, to move the product to the Big Creek Port because they have other obligations that they have to meet. Imagine that you come from the United States or the Caribbean; you come to Belize; you try to offload at the Belize Port and you can’t do that, so you have to take the product all the way back where you came from. So many of these shipping lines are looking to drop off the product in Belize and the port where they can do that [is] at the Big Creek Port.”

Exporters, Dr Zabaneh said, would follow the ships where they go because they use the empty imported containers to ship their goods.

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