Evergreen Shipping Agency (America), agent for Evergreen Marine Corp., will consolidate some North American offices and reduce staff in the face of the downturn in the global ocean shipping business.

“The worldwide economic turmoil has created a situation we have not seen in our lifetime,” the company said in a statement to its North America employees. The measures being taken will reduce costs and put the agency on a more sustainable structure moving forward, it said.

Affected offices include Baltimore, Charleston and Norfolk, which will transfer all customer service and most logistics-marine responsibility to the Dallas office. The agency will close its Salt Lake City office and move work done there to Dallas.

The Toronto office’s customer service and logistics work will be assigned to the Vancouver office. Baltimore and Toronto sales will remain in those cities.

The Chicago office will have a limited number of staff reductions in customer service and logistics.

Evergreen Line had previously announced capacity reductions on several trade lanes.

The company said a number of new positions will open in Dallas for which agency employees affected by the changes may apply. Severance, including salary and benefits, will be given to employees whose positions will be eliminated. The changes will be implemented on or before March 15.

The company did not say how many jobs are being eliminated.

“It is disappointing and disheartening that we are faced with a decision that has also impacted virtually every othercarrier in ocean shipping today,” an agency spokesperson said. “We are positioning EGA to survive the catastrophic economic crisis and to succeed when we recover from these difficult times.”

In November, Neptune Orient Lines, the Singapore parent of APL, announced it was laying off 1,000 employees, or approximately 9 percent of its work force, mostly in North America, and moving its Americas regional headquarters from Oakland, Calif., to a location elsewhere in the U.S.

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