Port of LA eyes new 80-acre staging facility

The Port of Los Angeles is looking to open a container staging facility on a parcel of property right in the middle of Terminal Island, home of the nation’s busiest containerized cargo terminal.    The Port of Los Angeles is moving forward with not only a proposed container staging facility, but also with a collaboration the nature of which is being kept under wraps for the next few days, port CEO Gene Seroka said Aug. 10 at the annual Global Supply Chain Excellence Summit at the University of Southern California.
   The container staging facility would be used to hold up to 3,500 truckloads daily from neighboring terminals.
   “Known as the Harbor Performance Enhancement Center, this will help the conveyance process, lessen congestion at our port terminals and allow for the trucking community to make speedy turns and deliveries to and from our customers’ facilities,” Seroka told an audience of about 500. “Nowhere else has this been done yet with near-dock property that we are on.”
   The chosen location, Seroka said, is “an 80 acre parcel of property right in the middle of Terminal Island, the nation’s busiest container terminal.”
   “We’ll begin again next Thursday at our [Port of LA harbor] board meeting with the approval of a new permit for testing purposes at this piece of property,” Seroka said.
   The Harbor Performance Enhancement Center, or HPEC, could help increase the port’s overall cargo handling capacity by 10 percent. The port typically handles anywhere between 25,000 and 26,000 TEUs daily, over 790,000 units per month.
   The project is being undertaken in concert with a consortium orchestrated by entrepreneur and investor Jonathan Rosenthal, the CEO of LA-based financial planning company Saybrook Capital and chair of board for drayage company Total Transportation Services.
   “Our signature project is with a fellow who’s become a close friend over the past couple of years to our supply chain community,” Seroka said of Rosenthal. “He has rolled the dice with us.
   “Moving forward, we’re trying to answer the question of what a 21st century port looks like,” he added. “It is one of collaboration and work and how government, private sector and investors can come together at one time.”
   The $100 million project could take up to three years to build, according to the port.
   Seroka also briefly discussed the topic of digitizing the supply chain, something the Port of LA and GE Transportation in July began working on in earnest via a pilot project involving APM Terminals, Maersk Line and MSC.
   “The recipe is pretty simple, and its simply aggregating all the supply chain data points that exist today, to get folks to share their information. And to build on the relationships that we’ve had for decades really is at the core of what we’re attempting to do.”
   In comments after his speech to the assemblage, Seroka told American Shipper that he expects the harbor board on Aug. 17 to approve an information technology project that involves work done on the pilot with Maersk and MSC. Seroka declined to give further details, however, only saying, “It’s going to be good stuff.”