Kingston Wharves Limited (KWL) on Sunday (February 27) welcomed the inaugural docking of Höegh Aurora, a state-of-the-art roll-on/roll-off (RoRo) cargo vessel, at the recently constructed Berth 7.

The event—which aligns with KWL’s 80th-anniversary celebrations and reinforces 15 years of partnership with cargo company Höegh Autoliners—highlighted an investment by Kingston Wharves in automobile trans-shipment and logistics management in Jamaica, including Berth 7; completed in late 2023 with a price tag of US$30 million.

KWL chairman Jeffrey Hall, said the event underscored the “big bets” that the company has taken on the growth of the global logistics industry and the “spirit of partnership” in which those decisions were made and implemented.

“We take those big decisions [to invest in our business] because we are operating in a global industry and we have to be efficient and competitive,” Hall is quoted in a press release, adding that KWL has made major investments because of the seriousness of its global partners like Höegh Autoliners in investing in their own businesses and their track record of innovation and strong spirit of enterprise.

With a carrying capacity of 9,100 car equivalent units (CEUs), Höegh Aurora, one of the largest pure car and truck carriers (PCTC) in the world, delivered 1,100 cargo—20 of which were static pieces and high and heavy cargo such as excavators, trucks and buses.

The deep-sea RoRo cargo vessel, making its first-ever call in Caribbean waters, also reflects Höegh’s, and by extension KWL’s, aspirations to foster a more eco-friendly logistics industry—powered by a combination of liquefied natural gas, ammonia and solar power.

The call of the ship comes ahead of the construction of a multi-level car park set to get underway shortly.

“We are pleased to announce again today that we will be spending another US$15 million to construct a car park that will be best in class and that will allow us to expand the capacity of the cars that we accommodate here,” Kingston Wharves CEO Mark Williams stated during a press briefing ahead of a tour of the vessel.

“As I said, right now, we’re about 170,000 moves per year. Our vision, certainly for Jamaica to become a lead logistics provider—and consistent with the vision of the Government—is to make Jamaica a well-established, well-invested port that can facilitate global logistics. We want to ensure that we can accommodate, you know, within the next five to 10 years, 500,000 cars moving through [the port of] Kingston.

Over the last decade, KWL has made significant investments to enhance its motor vehicle and general cargo management capacity. These include creating motor vehicle capacity through investment in the near-port Global Auto Logistics Centre at Tinson Pen; improvement to its on-dock transshipment motor vehicle infrastructure; the construction of our 160,000-square-foot Total Logistics Facility; and the US$30 million on Berth 7’s redevelopment.

At present, construction is underway at the Integrated Logistics Complex at Ashenheim Road, which will serve as a dual dry and cold warehouse facility in Kingston. That investment, with a value of US$25 million, is set to come on stream by the end of March.

Adding value to trans-shipment

Beyond the build-out of the car parks for trans-shipments, the company is also bullish on increasing employment opportunities by adding value to motor vehicles off-loaded in Jamaica.

“For you to service a vessel with 9,000 cars, it means you’re going to need people who can drive, and what we do at Kingston Wharves is we ensure that our drivers are well-trained in defensive driving, and are really, you know, best in class,” Williams pointed out.

“[And] to facilitate so many cars, understand that you can’t use paper and pen. So we do have a very robust IT system that we use to track those cars, that we use to ensure that all inventory on a particular unit, when it arrives, it leaves with an equal number of pieces of inventory, being here the radio, the AC, etc,” he further shared.

The KWL CEO added: “The view for us, and I’ll just put this together, is what we want to do is to move from just being a major trans-shipment hub to start adding value to cars, Being just inserting the AC unit, the music system, etc., etc. And I know that has been our vision for a number of years, and we’re working on that. But the point is, we want to move from just being the lead logistics provider in the region to becoming a company and a country that can compete with the best in the world.”

KWL trans-ships motor vehicles to over 40 countries and the Höegh Aurora vessel has 13 trans-shipment destinations in and around the Caribbean.

KWL, through its Global Auto Logistics Centre, operates five car parks at its docking facility and another seven car parks on over 18 acres at the Tinson Pen Aerodrome. Five of the car parks at Tinson Pen serve as special economic zones, which means that only 15 per cent of vehicles in those areas can be sold locally while others are sold overseas.

Maintaining a high standard

Commenting on the transformation of KWL into “a global player in automotive logistics business”, Hall told Our Today, “Kingston Wharves has secured this position on the back of its service standards, its technology and systems, and its capital investment…because Kingston Wharves operates with a global standard.”

He added that as the company emerges in that industry, there will be need for more sophisticated systems and with it a trained labour force that can operate, transport and add value to vehicles.

“These are technical roles, particularly the roles involved in the movement of heavy equipment. The people who perform these roles are a global asset. We are training for these roles, we have said publicly that we are hiring for these roles, we’re recruiting for these roles, and we are making efforts to retain the best people for these roles,” the KWL chairman added.

While the company is recruiting from entry-level positions to the more technical, Hall said the company is already “down the road in the [automotive trans-shipment] value chain with one further frontier to go”.