North Star Port

That June call preceded a second milestone: BBC Kolding, the newest LakerMax vessel, completing her maiden voyage with a July 12 call at the Duluth Cargo Connect facilities. Named after the Danish seaport city where BBC Chartering also maintains an office, BBC Kolding carried project cargo from China to Duluth. In between the BBC Genoa and BBC Kolding arrivals, another LakerMax ship, BBC Singapore, also docked in Duluth with project cargo from Vietnam. "More than half of Duluth- Superior's cargo categories showed year-over-year gains through the opening months of the 2026 navigation season, with breakbulk and project cargo volume up 9 percent year over year through June," said Kevin Beardsley, executive director, Duluth Seaway Port Authority. "Having three LakerMax arrivals within weeks of each other—including one completing the first full Seaway transit of its class and another finishing her maiden voyage—reflects both the benefits of our Seaway System and the tailored service that makes our port advantageous for moving heavy and oversized cargo deep into the continent." DULUTHPORT.COM | 5 PHOTOS / David Schauer In mid-July, smoke from wildfires burning in Ontario and the Superior National Forest drove Duluth-Superior air quality into the hazardous range, cloaking the port in a thick ashen haze. A Minnesota Pollution Control Agency monitor in West Duluth measured a pre- liminary state record for hourly wildfire smoke concentration at 6 a.m. on July 15, as a stagnant high-pressure ridge locked in smoke from expanding wild- fires. Visibility on Lake Superior fell to one nautical mile or less. The MPCA later reported that 9 of the 10 worst air quality readings ever recorded in Minnesota occurred the morning of July 15, and conditions worsened from there. On July 16, IQAir logged a 969 Air Quality Index reading in Duluth at 7 p.m. The EPA's standard AQI scale tops out at 500, and the "hazardous" cat- egory—the most severe on the scale— begins at 301, making Duluth's reading on IQAir's extended scale more than three times that threshold. The smoke plume that choked Duluth-Superior drifted east and south across the Great Lakes, push- ing air quality in major North American cities into the world's worst tiers. That same day, IQAir ranked Detroit, Minneapolis and Chicago as the three most polluted major cities on the planet, with Toronto close behind. The haze reached far enough to reshape calendars nearly 1,000 miles away: the Philadelphia Phillies moved up their baseball game against the New York Mets by an hour at Citizens Bank Park as air quality was forecast to worsen after sunset. Smoke over Superior BBC KOLDING CAPPED HER MAIDEN VOYAGE WITH A STOP AT THE DULUTH CARGO CONNECT DOCKS ON JULY 12, 2026.

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