BMW to ship extra cars through Baltimore

Starting in 2010, about a fifth of all BMWs sold in the United States will move through the port of Baltimore, a company spokesman said.

The luxury carmaker has entered into a five-year agreement to transport about 50,000 vehicles yearly through the port's Fairfield and Masonville auto terminals to Midwestern customers. Those cars now move through the Port of Charleston in South Carolina.

The 50,000 supplementary cars represent a 12 percent increase in auto shipping traffic over current volumes said James J. White, executive director of the Maryland harbor Administration.

That's going to add extra jobs and man-hours, he said.

In the economic year that ended June 30, about 400,000 autos passed through the port of Baltimore, down about a third from the earlier year.

White said that the harbor had been working for more than two years to attract BMW to Baltimore.These types of contractual obligations by a main automobile manufacturer don't happen overnight, he said. They have to be worked.

He credited the port of Baltimore's total excellence program that he said addresses the needs of manufacturers. A lot of big manufacturers want to be in our harbor because they know product is going to be handled efficiently, he said.

BMW North America has been considering ways to streamline its shipping operations for numerous years, said Tom Kowaleski, the company's vice president of company communications.

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