Global extending berth at Jersey City Terminal
Global Marine Terminal in Jersey City is planning to begin a $60 million berth extension project later this year.
Once completed in late 2008 or early 2009, the project will extend Global quay by 800 feet to about 2,600 feet.
That’s just one step to increase capacity for the terminal, which handles about 300,000 containers or 470,000 TEUs annually. This spring, the terminal acquired two new ship-to-shore cranes. So it now has six post-Panamax cranes capable of reaching across 22 rows of containers, big enough to handle the largest containerships ships afloat today.
In addition, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this summer is expected to begin deepening the Port Jersey Channel that serves the terminal from 41 feet to 50 feet.
The deeper channel and the fact that ships calling Global do not face air draft restrictions from the Bayonne Bridge, could act as a lure to carriers with big ships.
With its current 100-acre footprint and berth, the terminal can handle about 650,000 TEUs, said Maurice Byan, president and chief executive officer of Global Terminal and Container Services. With the berth extension, it believes it can boost that to 960,000 TEUs.
Global is an anomaly in New York because it is privately owned, whereas other terminals in the port are on property leased from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. In fact, the port authority owns and leases the eastern end of the same peninsula that Global occupies to automobile importers Northeast Auto-Marine Terminal (NEAT) and BMW.
The port authority has plans to gradually take over the land used by the automobile companies over the next dozen years, and about 16 acres is being returned by NEAT later this year. As that happens, Byan said he hopes Global would be able to lease land from the authority for expansion.
A study done several years ago found the entire peninsula could handle more than 1.5 million TEUs, and with improvements in cargo handling, the peninsula may be able to handle about 2 million TEUs, he said.
These ambitions are a far cry from the situation when Byan first arrived in Jersey City in 2001 after about 35 years on the Baltimore waterfront.
Early in his career he worked at stevedore John T. Clark, and from 1990-2001 he was president of the Steamship Trade Association of Baltimore, the Charm City equivalent of the New York Shipping Association.
When he first arrived at Global, its sole customer was the United Alliance of Hanjin, Cho Yang and Senator Line. Cho Yang sought bankruptcy protection, and Hanjin and Senator decided to consolidate port operations in Elizabeth, N.J.
For a three-month period in 2002, Global was entirely vacant. But in recent years the terminal has been on a roll. It currently is home to two services of the Grand Alliance of OOCL, Hapag-Lloyd, and NYK. They account for about 75 percent to 80 percent of Global’s business. One service, the Pacific Atlantic Express (PAX), on its eastward leg calls at ports in China, Taiwan and Japan before crossing the Pacific and calling at ports on the U.S. West Coast. The ships then transit the Panama Canal to U.S. East Coast ports, including the stop at Global. The ships retrace the route on the westward leg.
The other Grand Alliance service is the Asia East Coast Express (AEX). The westward leg originates in Southeast Asia, makes stops in Colombo and Jeddah before transiting the Suez Canal. After a stop in Gioia Tauro, Italy, the ships call U.S. East Coast ports, including Global. The ships then reverse direction and sail eastward to Southeast Asia via the Suez Canal.
Frankie Lau, marketing director of OOCL said the Grand Alliance today uses Panamax ships with 4,500-TEU capacities while the AEX service employs ships with capacities of 4,400 to 5,300 TEUs.
Global's deeper channel will give the carriers the option to use bigger ships in the AEX. But Lau notes: “the demand has to be there.” The PAX service will need not only demand, but also the new set of locks on the Panama Canal if it is to employ larger ships, he added.
Byan, while pleased that his terminal will be able to accommodate bigger vessels, said as a board member of the New York Shipping Association, he supports efforts to get the Bayonne Bridge replaced or raised so that larger ships can call the container terminals in Elizabeth, Newark, and on Staten Island.
Two other services at Global are operated by Hamburg Sud, CSAV and CCNI to the East and West coasts of South America. The West Coast service has just moved to Global from the Howland Hook terminal in the last few months.
“Like a lot of lines, they wanted to consolidate operations at a single location to simplify operations,” Byan said.
If Global and adjacent terminals are to achieve their full potential, he said improvements need to be made to local road and rail infrastructure, adding that New Jersey is studying possible road improvements.
A dedicated exit from the New Jersey Turnpike to the port area would be ideal, he said, since it would segregate commercial traffic to and from the port and surrounding warehouses from residential traffic in Bayonne and Jersey City.
He notes there are several nearby rail locations that potentially could be modified to handle intermodal rail traffic.
Conrail has a yard that is now used for loading autos, the Port Jersey Railroad runs the length of the peninsula on which Global is located, and there is another spur that leads to the Cross Harbor Railroad, which shuttles railcars between New Jersey and Brooklyn. These yards all link up through the Conrail shared assets to the CSX and Norfolk Southern railroads.
About 25,000 containers are drayed from Global to railheads around the port, either in Elizabeth, Kearny or Little Ferry. He said he was told several years ago that the railroads might be more interested in a rail service closer to Global once volumes climb north of 30,000 containers.
He notes shippers moving freight through Global may begin using the new on-dock rail facility at the New York Container Terminal at Howland Hook on Staten Island, which opened today.
Like Global, the New York Container Terminal is owned by the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan.
Bringing intermodal boxes to Staten Island, he said, would allow truckers to avoid congestion in New Jersey. The port authority has been encouraging rail traffic to reduce road congestion and air pollution.
Reducing pollution is a priority at Global too, Byan said. The company’s ship-to-shore cranes are electric, and as the company replaces rubber-tire gantry yard cranes, it will replace them with cleaner equipment, he said. The terminal has also renovated its gates, installing optical character recognition technology to speed the flow of trucks and reduce congestion and idling vehicles.