Torrential Tonnage.

Puerto Cabello, the second biggest Venezuelan port, keeps the country's cargo high and dry

WHEN DECEMBER'S KILLER FLOODS knocked out the main Venezuelan port of La Guaira, it looked like the Caracas area--the country's most vital and devastated region-would be left without emergency supplies, cargo or commerce until well into 2000. "1 don't know what we would have done without Puerto Cabello' says Kim Gadegaard, the head of Latin America Services for Maersk-SeaLand, one of the leading ocean-cargo carriers for the region.

A little more than 100 miles away, Puerto Cabello was already primed for more cargo. Its beefed-up docks and services had wrestled cargo away from other ports throughout the mid-1990s, but the No. 2 terminal had been hard-pressed to compete with La Guaira. That is until now. With tremors, high seas and more rain slowing repairs at the country's top international port and the gateway to Caracas, Puerto Cabello's marketing and promotions director, Roswaldo Guerreiro, says, "Some of this cargo could wind up remaining here even after La Guaira opens."

A decade or so ago, few would have believed it. At that time, Puerto Cabello handled less than half of the country's maritime shipping needs--mostly grain, chemicals and other bulk commodities for the nearby petrochemical plants and refineries. Viewed from the old Spanish Solano fort atop mount El Vigia, Puerto Cabello looked a lot like what it was--a sleepy Venezuelan fishing village.

Stacks of boxes. Heavy-duty investment and promotion changed the town's look Stacks of containers stretched across the port to the base of the Cerro de Patanemo mountains. U.S.-based Crowley American Transport, then the biggest shipper in Latin America, made the country's second-biggest terminal the axis for its burgeoning regional services. "The port had become a connecting point for us," says Mark Miller, a spokesman for Crowley Marine. "It became a relay point for a lot of different services, especially for what we call way-way cargo--goods that don't touch U.S. soil--like cargo that goes from the west coast of South America to the east coast of South America."

By 1998, Crowley was docking more than 22 ships a month at the port. As it had done elsewhere around the world, Crowley opted for the port because it could demand and get more personalized service than the big-name ports, where shipping lines often get lost in the shuffle.

Puerto Cabello's charge. Puerto Cabello found it had to do some shuffling itself-- to make room for more cargo. By 1998, the port was handling more than 9.5 million tons a year and more than 400,000 containers--a third more containers than La Guaira, although still less cargo overall, according to Guerreiro.

The port picked up even more speed when the government stopped managing the ports from the capital and allowed each one to run its own affairs. "We started to take more cargo from other ports," Guerreiro says. "We wound up with 60% of all the containers for the country."

But the country's economic problems squeezed the port's cargo volumes in 1999. Then, most of Crowley's ships stopped calling after the U.S. shipping line sold its South American East Coast service to the German company Hamburg-Sud. The only Crowley Marine ships that continued to stop in Puerto Cabello were those working the line's Mexican Gulf service.

As the end of 1999 approached, the port had handled only about 8.8 million tons. "We were only working at 75% capacity," Guerreiro says. So when La Guaira closed, Puerto Cabello was more than ready.

"The port has been handling everything that is being thrown at it," Gadegaard said. "We haven't been seeing any congestion or delays."

La Guaira announced it would be open early in the year, but shipping-line executives had their doubts. "There has been a considerable amount of damage," says Frank Larken, senior vice president and general manager for Hamburg-Sud's Crowley service.

Guerreiro adds: "Even if they get the port itself clear, some of their warehouses were destroyed and contaminated by chemicals. The La Guaira-Caracas road has [also] been damaged and has cargo restrictions."

Puerto Cabello officials hope that the cargo is here to stay, but shippers caution that La Guaira will always be closer to Caracas. "It only takes 45 minutes or so to get cargo from the port to Caracas," Gadegaard says. By comparison, the run to Puerto Cabello can be more than three times as long, on a good day.

That's an important consideration--much of the cargo is finished goods whose importers put a premium on time to market. So Puerto Cabello officials are going to need more than a strong storm to hang on to their newfound booty.