Lanai drives up intrastate cargo

First billionaire Larry Ellison purchased most of Lanai, then he bought Island Air, and most recently he acquired Hotel Lanai.

Now the fifth-richest person in the world — with a net worth of $48 billion according to Forbes magazine — is making his presence felt with Young Brothers Ltd., the state’s largest interisland cargo shipper.

Strong construction activity on Lanai, which is 98 percent owned by Ellison, boosted Young Brothers’ total cargo volume in the second quarter and allowed the shipper to eke out its fifth consecutive quarterly gain on a year-over-year basis.

Young Brothers’ volume rose 0.3 percent to 34,024 "container/platform equivalents" from 33,936 CPEs in the year-earlier quarter. But the volume would have been down 2 percent statewide without a 60.4 percent spike in second-quarter shipments to and from Lanai, which represents only 5 percent of Young Brothers’ total cargo volume.

Ellison, who bought most of Lanai in June 2012, is in the process of making major upgrades to two Four Seasons luxury hotels on the island and other improvements. Lanai cargo volume has continued to show double-digit increases due to ongoing shipments of materials and for the first half of the year was up 52.6 percent.

Overall, Young Brothers’ cargo shipments between Oahu and six neighbor-island ports were virtually flat in the April-June period with volume increasing for Hilo (up 2.2 percent) and Lanai but decreasing for Maui (2.2 percent), Kawaihae (0.2 percent), Kauai (4.6 percent) and Molokai (6.4 percent).

On Lanai, second-quarter volume rose to 1,670 CPEs from 1,041 CPEs. But that’s still a fraction of the more than 12,000 CPEs shipped between Oahu and Maui during the quarter.

Young Brothers uses the CPE measurement to compare cargo volumes across different sizes of containers.

"A year ago, the second quarter had significant volume growth, so a flat comparison still signals relative strength in the neighbor island economies from our viewpoint," Young Brothers President Glenn Hong said in a statement. "However, we’re still very much in a wait-and-see environment from quarter to quarter for interisland cargo volume."

Young Brothers said in addition to the strong construction-related activity on Lanai that automobiles and renewable-energy volume increased statewide. Declining volume was experienced by the recycling sector among other groups, while several other sectors had flat comparisons.

Agricultural cargo volume statewide rose 5.7 percent during the quarter from the year-earlier period, but agricultural exports fell at all ports except Hilo (up 18.7 percent) and Kawaihae (up 32.7 percent) on Hawaii island. Agricultural shipments were down 8.1 percent on Oahu, 14.6 percent on Maui, 26.9 percent on Kauai and 4.6 percent on Molokai. There were no agricultural shipments for Lanai.

Overall volume for the first half of the year was up 2.2 percent with increases on Maui (1 percent), Hilo (5.4 percent), Kawaihae (1.7 percent) and Lanai but declines on Kauai (2.2 percent ) and Molokai (4.7 percent).

"From an operations perspective, we like to see steady annual growth in volume," Hong said. "We ended 2013 with an overall increase of 1.5 percent, so our midyear mark is a good place to be. We’re hopeful that the second half of the year will sustain an overall positive trend."