Mexico’s government wants to build a new marine terminal that could nearly double the annual volume of containers moving through the country’s busiest seaport.
The Port of Manzanillo said the federal government is considering a $1.2 billion expansion for the port, which is located in the western state of Colima. The expansion would include the development of four new marine terminals.
Along with terminals for handling grains, minerals and oil products, the project would include a specialized container terminal capable of handling up to 1.75 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of containers.
The new projects would be sited in the neighboring Cuyutlan Lagoon. Manzanillo’s port authority, along with Mexico’s government, have carried out dredging and channel clearing in the northern area of the port.
It also plans to carry out environmental remediation work in the lagoon such as building dams against silt and modernizing a water treatment plant.
Manzanillo has a total of 14 operating terminals to handle a variety of bulk goods. SSA Marine, a unit of Carrix, operates Manzanillo’s container terminal. The 89-acre facility has five container ship berths capable of handling post-panamax container ships.
The port reported 13.5 million tons of cargo and 1.24 million TEUs handled in the first five months of 2019, an increase of 1.2 and 4.8 percent from the same period last year, respectively.
California gets Texas-sized U-Turn
The Port of Long Beach is touting the redesign of one its main roadways as a way to make trucking in the nation’s second largest port safer and more efficient for drivers.
Starting this weekend, truckers will have access to the “port access undercrossing,” a second tunnel near the intersection of Ocean Boulevard and State Route 47 (SR-47) on Terminal Island.
The opening of the second tunnel is part of the larger project to replace the Gerald Desmond Bridge that spans the port. The $1.47 billion project will raise the bridge’s clearance 50 feet from the current 155-feet height above water. The bridge raising will allow larger container ships to reach marine terminals in Long Beach’s inner harbor.
The bridge’s developer said the second tunnel will allow “trucks and other vehicles to make a safe and free-flowing U-turn at the west end of the project.”
The project’s developers dubbed the second tunnel a Texas U-turn, “so named because it’s a common feature at intersections in the Lone Star state (that) enables vehicles traveling on one side of a one-way frontage road to make a U-turn onto the opposite frontage road without stopping at a traffic signal.”
The feature will mostly affect drivers leaving the Total Terminals International facility on Pier T. Starting this Friday, construction crews will permanently close the eastbound Ocean Boulevard loop onramp from Pier T on Terminal Island. Trucks instead will be directed to the port access undercrossing.
The traffic feature also helped reduce the cost of the new project versus building and maintaining ‘flyover’ ramps for vehicles entering and leaving Pier T, said Duane Kenagy, a capital programs executive for the Port of Long Beach.
“This nonstop U-turn is among many features of the new bridge that will provide a more efficient flow of cargo traffic in and out of our Port,” Kenagy said.
MSC bails out its busted container ship
Container line posts $50 million in cash and bond for release of MSC Gayane. (American Shipper)
China slated to become largest LNG importer
Push for cleaner air will unseat Japan as world’s largest LNG consumer. (Seatrade Maritime)
Climate regulation threatens oil tankers
Declining use of fossil fuels poses risks for tankers becoming ‘stranded assets’. (Financial Times)