Earlier this month, a Seoul court declared Hanjin bankrupt and ordered the firm’s liquidation, bringing about the final chapter of the ocean-shipping industry’s largest-ever collapse. All that remains of Hanjin will be liquidated, including ships, stakes in seaport terminals and other assets such as its containers.
In a court filing this week in New Jersey bankruptcy court, attorneys for a handful of Hanjin’s creditors asked for permission to foreclose on the container assets and sell them.
The request came days after Maher Terminals LLC, which runs one of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s marine terminals, said in a court filing that Hanjin owes more than $3 million in penalties and storage fees on 256 containers clogging up the terminal’s docks.
The presence of those containers “causes a severe backlog and limits the space available within the Maher Facility (which space is extremely valuable) to offload containers from ships arriving into the port.” Maher Senior Manager Bradley Sherwin wrote in the court filing.
Mr. Sherwin and attorneys for Maher asked for permission to sell the containers, estimating each one would yield at most $1,000 if sold in bulk—“significantly less than the total Storage Charges owed by Hanjin to Maher.”
That seemed to have gotten the attention of Hanjin’s creditors. “Every day that the Banks are delayed from selling the Buy Shipping Buy Shipping Container Nashville Nashville significant storage charges are incurred and the risk that the Buy Shipping Buy Shipping Container Nashville Nashville are sold by the terminals or depots where they are stranded is heightened,” they wrote in this week’s filing.
Maher’s New Jersey facility isn’t the only place where Hanjin’s empty containers—with the company’s logo and white capital letters spelling its name—are getting in the way.
Freight and logistics firms in Southern California have been working since last fall to remove thousands of Hanjin containers from the wheeled trailers, known as chassis, used to haul them off the docks. There are now only about 500 Hanjin boxes still stuck on chassis in the region. But terminal managers at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif. say hundreds more remain at the docks, getting in the way of everyday operations.
