From deeper channels to enhanced terminal infrastructure, ports along the Atlantic Coast of Florida are positioning to handle ever-increasing cargo flows, including from megacontainerships of global carrier alliances.
In a number of cases, recent federal grant announcements are providing a boost, including for channel endeavors at Port Everglades and the Port of Jacksonville, while Port Canaveral has garnered funds for berth modernization and the niche Port of Fernandina looks to benefit from federal short-sea shipping grant money.
PortMiami
The latest development at Miami-Dade County’s PortMiami is a densification project to make the most of the South Florida Container Terminal yard footprint, facilitating greater cargo flows while cutting environmental impacts. Six new electrified rubber-tired gantries are to be operational in March, with the zero-emissions ERTGs replacing diesel-powered units.
In its latest fiscal year, ended Sept. 30, 2019, PortMiami enjoyed a record containerized cargo volume of 1.12 million 20-foot-equivalent units, up 3.4 percent from the preceding 12-month period and marking the fifth consecutive year the port has topped 1 million TEUs of container throughput. The port also set a world cruise record in fiscal 2019, with 6,824,000 passenger transits.
Port officials attribute the cargo gains to a diverse balance of global trade and completion over the past few years of more than $1 billion in infrastructure improvements, including a direct tunnel link to the Interstate highway system, upgraded on-dock rail and additional super-post-Panamax container cranes. Completion in 2015 of the Deep Dredge endeavor, delivering 50-foot channel depth, has allowed the port to accommodate hundreds of megacontainerships deployed by global alliances.
Port of Miami River
Miami River Marine Group leadership points to the successful upriver move last August of a 2,700-ton-capacity megayacht shiplift as an example of collaborative efforts engaging private industry with the U.S. Coast Guard and local marine law enforcement. Tug and tow services of Hempstead Marine Inc. maneuvered the barge through tidal currents and sharp bends, under three fixed bridges and through seven raised bascule spans, as the project cargo made its way up the 5.5-mile-long federal waterway to the expanding megayacht shipyard facility of RMK Merrill-Stevens.
Private terminals along the Miami River’s 15-foot-deep navigational channel continue to furnish an integral link with shallow-draft ports throughout the Caribbean region, including the Dominican Republic and Haiti. All told, cargo ships head from the Miami River to more than 100 ports throughout the Caribbean Basin, Central America and South America. While also lined with marinas, restaurants and inns, the Miami River clearly maintains active marine transportation operations.
Among several private terminal operators along the working river is century-old Betty K Agencies Ltd., specializing in Bahamian services, which recently expanded its warehouse and terminal facilities.
Port Everglades
This month’s biggest news for Broward County’s Port Everglades is the Feb. 10 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announcement of a new start designation related to longstanding efforts to deepen port navigation channels to between 48 feet and 50 feet from the present 42 feet, plus widen certain sections. The designation advances $29.1 million in federal funds toward reconfiguration of a U.S. Coast Guard station so the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway can be widened by 250 feet at what is now a critical chokepoint. The overall channel project, authorized in the Water Resources Development Act of 2016, is in the preconstruction engineering and design phase.
Port Everglades has nearly $900 million in infrastructure improvements planned for the next five years as part of a larger $1.6 billion capital investment program, guided by a freshly updated master/vision plan.
A $471 million berth expansion is to add new Southport cargo berths while lengthening the existing turnaround area and installing crane rail infrastructure for new super-post-Panamax gantries. Also, CenterPoint is building a new international logistics center to replace the port’s outdated Foreign-Trade Zone facility.
Port of Palm Beach
At the Port of Palm Beach, northernmost of South Florida’s seaports, located in Riviera Beach, longtime leading tenant Tropical Shipping is growing operations on multiple fronts. The company, which has operated at the port for 56 years, has recently deployed a half-dozen new container vessels, offering greater capacity in reliably serving the Caribbean/Bahamian region. In addition, Tropical is now leasing a 3-acre yard for positioning of refrigerated containers.
Meanwhile, the port is actively seeking $1.2 million in federal grant funding to expand its rail infrastructure, in hopes of more-than-doubling the port’s annual intermodal rail throughput to 95,000 TEUs a year from 44,000 TEUs while enhancing security and significantly reducing truck traffic.
Recent Port of Palm Beach additions include Sunshine Biofuels, which stores and transloads nonhazardous biofuel feedstocks, ships out blended biofuels by rail and works with port tenant Bahamas Ferries on export shipments. Another new customer, American Navigation LLC, also known as Calcean, has begun importing aragonite sand from the Bahamas, typically coming in via shipments of 6,500 metric tons, then trucked to Florida destinations and railed to other states.
Port Canaveral
At Central Florida’s Port Canaveral, where Gulftainer unit GT USA operates the Canaveral Cargo Terminal, multiple berth projects are moving forward to accommodate increasingly diverse cargo flows.
On target for spring completion is $18.5 million North Cargo Berth 9, to provide a 35-foot-draft multimodal/intermodal quay for handling heavy shipments, including space components, via vessels as long as 850 feet; a further 120-foot pier extension is to be done by fall. Also, a $70 million endeavor, buoyed by a $14.1 million federal grant, is under way to rehabilitate 1,841 feet of obsolete bulkhead plus uplands at North Cargo Pier 3 and North Cargo Pier 4.
Port Canaveral is advancing on the liquefied natural gas front as well, working with cruise partners and government regulators to ensure safe receipt, storage and dispensing of LNG in advance of fall homeporting – at a new $163 million cruise terminal – of Carnival Cruise Line’s 5,200-passenger-capacity Carnival Mardi Gras, to be the first North America-based cruise ship powered by LNG. And the Port Canaveral Maritime Training Academy is offering specialized training for handling LNG as marine fuel.
JAXPORT
The Jacksonville Port Authority, better known as JAXPORT, has gotten good news this month with Feb. 10 announcement of $93 million in federal funding to help advance the $484 million project to deepen the Northeast Florida port’s shipping channel to 47 feet. The project is on target to complete deepening as far inland as JAXPORT’s Blount Island Marine Terminal by 2023 – two years ahead of original schedule.
At Blount Island, JAXPORT and SSA Marine are partnering, with a $20 million federal grant boost, to expand SSA’s current leasehold to include a new $238.7 million SSA Jacksonville Container Terminal, to offer simultaneous berthing for two post-Panamax vessels
These and other efforts look to build upon JAXPORT’s positions as Florida’s busiest containerport, with record moves of nearly 1.34 million TEUs in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2019, and as the nation’s second-busiest vehicle-handling port. JAXPORT also is at the LNG forefront, with a growing number of LNG-powered ships taking advantage of Jacksonville’s on-dock LNG fueling capabilities and Eagle LNG Partners breaking ground this year on a $542 million LNG export facility.
Port of Fernandina
Just north of Jacksonville, the Port of Fernandina, now operated by Worldwide Terminals Fernandina LLC under a 35-year agreement with the Ocean Highway and Port Authority of Nassau County, also has received early 2020 glad tidings from the federal government. In January, the U.S. Maritime Administration awarded more than $1.29 million in America’s Marine Highway Program grant funding for purchase of equipment to support start of container-on-barge service to link the port with South Carolina’s Port of Charleston.
Last year, the port refinanced debt and gained funds for future development through issuance of $27.6 million in public bonds, and the port inked a five-year pact with Schuyler Line Navigation Co. LLC to serve as Southeast hub for the Annapolis, Maryland-based vessel operator’s governmental and commercial activities.
The port, which recently saw its berths deepened to 40 feet plus 2 feet of overdredge, is enjoying growth in exports of Kraft linerboard and lumber plus return of such traditional imports as Brazilian woodpulp and North European lumber. As tariffs ease, port officials anticipate return of Asian plywood imports and European metals imports.
