Young Bros. deliveries flat for the first quarter

The state’s largest carrier of interisland ocean cargo extended a more than four-year stretch of fairly level delivery volumes with roughly flat first-quarter results.

Young Brothers Ltd. announced Wednesday that cargo deliveries between Honolulu and six neighbor island ports inched up 0.2 percent in the January-March period compared with the same three months last year.

The tiny gain follows four years of annual cargo growth that has been between 0.1 percent and 1.5 percent, and reversed small declines of 0.6 percent in each of the two previous quarters.

As measured by the number of container or platform equivalents that Young Bros. refers to as CPEs, the first-quarter gain equaled just 65 CPEs out of roughly 31,500.

“The first quarter ended with a modest increase in shipments at most of our ports,” Roy Catalani, vice president of Young Bros., said in a statement.

Young Bros. said business in the first quarter was up at five of six neighbor island ports. The only port with a decline was Lanai, where cargo shipments plummeted 26.2 percent because major construction on the island focused on remodeling a luxury Four Seasons hotel wrapped up early last year.

Excluding Lanai, which is the smallest of the six neighbor island ports, Young Bros. interisland cargo volume was up 1.4 percent.

Hilo had the biggest gain at 3.2 percent. Cargo volume at Nawiliwili on Kauai edged up 1.5 percent. At Kawaihae on Hawaii island, there was a 0.9 percent gain. The increase was 0.8 percent on Molokai and 0.7 percent on Maui in Kahului.

Some areas of business that were positive included automobile shipments that were largely driven by a used-car dealer, which offset lower volume from rental car companies; construction; and the waste and recycling industry, which saw an uptick after what Young Bros. called a prolonged period of low prices that depressed business. On the other hand, shipments from beverage companies and shipments of agricultural products were lower statewide, the company said.