The Shipping Industry

The chairman and chief executive officer of Kingston Wharves Limited (KWL), Grantley Stephenson, has rejected media reports of a bid by Chinese interests to purchase that facility.

His response came as a result of ongoing confusion in the media with regards to Kingston Wharves, a multi-purpose, listed port company located at Port Bustamante, and its western neighbour, the Kingston Container Terminal (KCT), which is a government-owned terminal specialising in the transshipment of containers.

According to Stephenson, "We have noted an article on the front page of yesterday's Observer , captioned 'Chinese want Kingston Wharves', and would like to point out that Kingston Wharves Limited (commonly referred to as Kingston Wharves) is a listed company on the Jamaica Stock Exchange that is not in any way associated with Kingston Container Terminal, which is the true subject of the article."

It is a common error for media houses in Jamaica to use photographs of KCT to illustrate stories about KWL, and to refer to Kingston Wharves as a generic term for KCT.

The KWL chairman said this was unfortunately a repeated error by the Observer , "the last being in August 2009 when that newspaper had to make a similar correction. Being a public company, when these errors occur, it causes great concern among our stakeholders, resulting in wasted resources and time to have the error corrected."

Stephenson demanded a correction of the error and has offered to assist the media with guidance to prevent a recurrence.