DATE: Wednesday, March 26, 1997             TAG: 9703260497

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   51 lines

PORT ON PACE TO BREAK LAST YEAR'S TONNAGE RECORD

The Port of Hampton Roads' record-breaking growth continued in January and February.

The tons of cargo shipped across the region's docks climbed 7.1 percent in the first two months of 1997, up 104,000 tons to 1.56 million tons over the same period last year, the Virginia Port Authority announced Tuesday.

So the port is well on pace to top last year's tonnage record of 9.6 million tons and meet the port authority's projection of 4.6 percent growth this year, said John D. Covaney, the port authority's senior managing director of marketing services.

All of the growth came in cargo shipped in containers, the truck-sized metal boxes that can be readily moved between ships, trucks and rail cars. Other cargos, known generally as break-bulk, fell 26.8 percent to 45,266 tons.

``It's been falling, but I think it's going to level off,'' Covaney said.

The break-bulk losses are significant because handling such cargo requires more manpower than handling containers. Still,container cargo volumes are sufficient to ensure that the terminals are likely generating more man-hours for dockworkers than last year.

The port has been losing shipments of one particular break-bulk commodity - cocoa beans. A lot of that business has been lost to non-union terminals in Philadelphia, said Joseph A. Dorto, chief executive and general manager of Virginia International Terminals Inc., which operates the port's three state-owned terminals.

The port has made up some of the cocoa bean losses in shipments of steel and rubber, which also isn't shipped in containers, Dorto said.

Meanwhile, port officials said a container ship's collision last week with a wharf at Norfolk International Terminals caused minimal damage, chipping some concrete, but not harming the pier's structure.

``It could have been millions, if a crane had been there,'' said Robert R. Merhige III, the port authority's general counsel.

The Copacabana, a 584-foot ship working for a Brazilian line, was pulling away from the wharf on March 17 when its propeller malfunctioned, sending the ship into reverse, said Scott Schubart of Inchcape Shipping Services, the ship's agent in the port.

``It was so close to the dock that even though they dropped the anchors and cut off the engines, it couldn't avoid backing into the pier,'' Schubart said.

The Copacabana is at Newport News Shipbuilding for several weeks of repairs to its rudder and the propeller, Schubart said. While he had no estimate of the damage to the ship, he said its owners are taking advantage of the downtime to get some other work done as well.

MEMO: Staff Writer Christopher Dinsmore can be phoned at 757/446-2271 or

e-mailed at (dins(AT)pilotonline.com).

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