The first phase of the “Middle Harbor Project,” due to go into operation this year, will add about 10 percent more container capacity to the nation’s second largest container port and allow Long Beach Container Terminal to handle 18,000-TEU vessels.
OOCL’s Long Beach Container Terminal (LBCT) handled its first ship in the highly automated section of the terminal.
The terminal said the appropriately named containership OOCL Long Beach arrived at Pier E on April 7 and was successfully worked.
OOCL Beijing, another ship deployed in the carrier’s South China 2 service, was due to arrive on Tuesday and after discharging some cargo at the non-automated Pier F section of LBCT, move to the automated E section on April 14.
The six ships in OOCL’s South China 2 string, a G6 Alliance service, are all provided by OOCL and range from 8,063 to 8,888 TEU in capacity, according to ocean carrier schedule and capacity database BlueWater Reporting. The weekly loop has a full port rotation Long Beach, Kaohsiung, Xiamen, Hong Kong, Da Chan Bay, Hong Kong, Yantian, Kaohsiung, Long Beach.
OOCL signed a 40 year lease for the “Middle Harbor” terminal in April 2012 and over a nine year period is spending $1.3 billion to upgrade, automate, and combine Pier E and Pier F into a single facility. The entire project is expected to be completed by 2019.
Pier F is not yet automated, but Pier E has been testing systems for more than a year. During the soft start-up of the terminal, ships are being worked at both sections of the terminal.
LBCT uses semi-automated dual hoist ship to shore cranes to discharge vessels, and automated guided vehicles to shuttle boxes to rows of containers tended by automated stacking cranes. Those automated stacking cranes transfer containers between vessels and the trucks draying containers to and from the terminal.
Eventually cargo will be drayed between those stacks and the terminal’s on-dock rail facility.
Jon Slangerup, the chief executive officer of the Port of Long Beach, said during his annual “State of the Port” address in January that when the first phase of the so-called “Middle Harbor Project” goes into operation this year, it will add about 10 percent more container capacity to the nation’s second largest container port, which handled 7.2 million TEUs last year, and allow LBCT to handle 18,000-TEU vessels.
A second phase, scheduled for completion in 2019, will boost LBCT’s capacity to 3.3 million TEUs. That project will add another 10 percent to the port’s capacity and provide the terminal with the capability to handle 24,000-TEU ships.
OOCL’s LBCT handles first ship at new automated facility
