Alexander & Baldwin (CIK: 0000003453) is the parent company of Matson Navigation and Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Company (HC&S). The company’s 2010 Third Quarter Report to the US Security and Exchange Commission showed a slight decline in container volume to Hawaii but a huge increase in shipping to China.

Transportation profits for Matson jumped from $24.2 million to $40.4 million from January through September 2010 when compared to the same period in 2009. This jump with 33,100 containers for the same three quarters in 2009. Matson operates two routes to and from China with five leased foreign-flagged ships of 3500 TEU.

Hundreds of ships line up in the waters of the Singapore Straits waiting for its turn in the Port of Singapore. The Port handles an average of 348 vessels a day. In 2010, the Port handled a total of 127,299 vessels of various types. This was a decline of 3.4 percent from the peak of 131,695 vessels handled in 2008.

Ranking the wealth of nations

A 2010 report by the International Monetary Fund ranks countries by wealth based on calculating the money it would take to have a similar standard of living. The dollar amount shown below is the country’s Gross Domestic Product per person based on the purchasing power parity of their currency.

This shows the total wealth produced by the country and is not the same as personal income. In most of these countries, this wealth is held by a small group of very rich people, while the average worker earns a small fraction of this wealth.

The United States is shown as the 6th wealthiest country. Within the U.S. there’s a wide range of wealth— Hawaii ranks #11 and Kentucky, South Carolina, Idaho, Utah and Mississippi rank among the lowest. of $16.2 million in profit was mainly due to a 33.5 percent increase in containers moved between Long Beach, California and the Chinese ports of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Shanghai. Matson’s China trade grew to 44,200 containers for the three quarters of 2010 compared.

Shanghai, China, is the world’s busiest port, handling 29.05 million 20-foot equivalent (TEU) containers. The Yangshan Deep-Water Port in Shangahi (above) was built in 2005. It can handle container ships of up to 8,500 TEU. Photo by Reb42 under a free public license from Creative Commons.

Container volume to and from Hawaii was down by 2,300 containers, or a drop of 2.3 percent, and automobiles delivered declined by 800 vehicles, or 1.3 percent. Shipments to Guam increased by 800 containers or 6.7 percent, due to military shipments.

The Port of Singapore is the second busiest container port in the world, handling 28.4 million TEU containers in 2010.

The Skypark of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore is shaped like a ship and sits on top of three 57-story towers. At a construction cost of $5.5 billion, the Marina Bay Sands complex is the world’s second most expensive hotel. It includes a 2,560 room hotel, a shopping mall, restaurants, museums, theaters, exhibition halls, and a casino. The complex was built by U.S. gaming giant Las Vegas Sands.