The ports of Philadelphia and Wilmington are planning infrastructure improvements as a project to deepen the river nears completion.
Aerial view of dredging operations along the Delaware River.
Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Various plans are underway to improve shipping along the Delaware River, one of the country’s oldest shipping routes, including infrastructure improvements at the Port of Philadelphia, the deepening of the main river channel, and an expansion at the Port of Wilmington, Del.
Over the past several years, ports all up and down the U.S. East Coast have undergone significant upgrades, including dredging to handle the larger containerships that have become commonplace in global shipping operations. This development has been accelerated by the June 2016 opening of the Panama Canal’s new locks, which can handle vessels with up to 14,000 TEUs in capacity, nearly three times the previous limit.
In November, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf announced over $300 million in grant funding awarded to the Port of Philadelphia for infrastructure, warehousing and equipment upgrades. Officials at the port anticipate work will begin early in 2017 and continue through 2020, according to a press release issued by Wolf’s office. The majority of this funding—about $200 million—will go towards modernizing the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal to handle larger containerships.
Improvements at Philadelphia’s largest container handling terminal will include the purchase of four new electric post-Panamax cranes, the construction of new warehouses and relocation of existing ones to facilitate container growth, and a deepening to 45 feet of the terminal’s marginal berths. In addition, electrical infrastructure throughout the Packer Avenue facility will be upgraded to support electrification of existing diesel cranes and cold ironing capabilities at the terminal.
As a result of the upgrades, capacity at the terminal will increase from its current 400,000-plus TEUs to 900,000 TEUs, and will be scalable to exceed 1.2 million TEUs in the future.
Packer Avenue Marine Terminal’s tenant, Astro Holdings, Inc., will purchase one of the post-Panamax container cranes for the terminal and dedicate privately-owned port land located next to the terminal—the firm’s 40-acre “Publicker” site—in order to help boost container growth.
Tom Holt Jr., president of Astro Holdings, Inc., told American Shipper in a phone interview the project to deepen the terminal’s berths is on schedule to be completed in mid-2017.
Shanghai-based equipment manufacturer ZPMC will be providing two of the terminal’s four new cranes, but it is still not certain who will provide the other two, Holt said. The two cranes on order from ZPMC will arrive in October 2017. The terminal is currently equipped with seven container cranes, but four of these will be replaced with the new cranes.
Holt said that 9,500-TEU vessels can currently call the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal, but with these enhancements, the facility will be able to handle ships with up to 14,000 TEUs in capacity.
Holt praised Gov. Wolf and the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority (PRPA) for “demonstrating outstanding vision and leadership in recognizing the importance of the river to the future of the region’s economy,” adding that the investment “is the next step in building a world-class shipping and logistics industry in the Delaware Valley, one that will pay dividends on both sides of the river for years to come.”
Around $90 million of the remaining investment funding at the port will go towards its automobile import/export facility, according to Wolf’s office. Improvements will include adding 155 paved and fenced acres above the flood plain at the port’s Southport site, converting Southport’s former seaplane hangar into a second auto-processing site, upgrading the main auto-processing facility at Pier 98 Annex, and establishing a framework that provides flexibility for use of the land the port needs for containers and automobiles, as determined by market demands.
In addition, the Port of Philadelphia’s Tioga Marine Terminal will receive $12 million for enhancements, including improvements at the terminal’s main on-dock warehouse, the conversion of a second warehouse into a food-grade storage facility, improved rail access, and the purchase of a second mobile harbor crane.
Elsewhere along the river, a project to dredge its primary waterways that began in 2010 is nearing completion. The Delaware River Main Channel Deepening Project, which will increase the river’s depth from 40 feet to 45 feet, is on schedule and should be completed by the end of 2017, Ed Voigt, a spokesperson for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Philadelphia, said in a phone interview.
Broadkill Beach before sand was dredged from the Delaware Bay.
Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
The Maritime Exchange for the Delaware River and Bay’s 2016 winter issue of The Beacon newsletter cited PRPA Executive Director and CEO Jeff Theobald as saying the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, through the PRPA as a local sponsor, has already contributed about $112 million for the Delaware River Main Channel Deepening Project to match the federal contribution of $264 million.
Seven of the 10 dredging contracts are complete and the eighth is underway, The Beacon said. The contract currently underway, the project’s largest at $77 million, involves the removal of rock in several locations within Reach B of the channel, mainly in the area adjacent to Chester and Marcus Hook, Pa. In order to protect the Atlantic sturgeon, this work is taking place in two separate environmental windows. A significant amount of the rock was removed between December 2015 and March 2016, while the second phase has been scheduled to take place during the same months in 2016 and 2017.
The ninth contract was awarded to the Dutra Group for $32.6 million to deepen the upper area of Reach E, the northern end of the Delaware Bay.
Expected to be awarded in the spring of 2017, the tenth and last contract will be for pipeline and bucket dredging to deepen the remainder of Reach B of the channel between Chester and Wilmington, as well as the Marcus Hook Anchorage.
Meanwhile, the Port of Wilmington, Del. is also spending $10 million to acquire a 114-acre site from the Chemours Co. in Edgemoor, Del. According to John Haroldson, marketing director of the Diamond State Port Corp., negotiations are proceeding as planned and the authority hopes to close on the site by March 2017. Development of the site will ultimately depend on a private investor stepping forward, since the port itself will not be developing it. The expectation is that it will be a container terminal, Haroldson said.
As far as the Port of Wilmington’s existing berths go, the majority of them are situated along the Christina River and cannot be dredged beyond the current depth of 38 feet, but the port does have one berth along the Delaware River.
According to ocean carrier schedule and capacity database BlueWater Reporting, Wilmington is frequented by five direct region-to-region liner services: three fully cellular container services and two that primarily transport automobiles. A Great White Fleet service that strictly operates between Wilmington and Central America deploys the largest containerships handled by the port. Vessels on this loop average 2,490 TEUs.
By comparison, the Port of Philadelphia is called by 12 regularly scheduled loops: nine that operate with fully cellular containerships, one that deploys multi-purpose vessels, one that uses pure car/truck carriers, and one that deploys specialist refrigerated (reefer) cargo ships. MSC’s SAWC-USA-NWC deploys the largest containerships calling the port, with vessels on the loop averaging 9,115 TEUs.
Hailey Desormeaux is Web Editor of American Shipper. She can be reached by email here.