Crowley obtains additional space at Port of Jacksonville

Carrier signs 20-year lease in advance of deploying new con-ro ships in the Puerto Rico trade.    Crowley will expand its operations at the Port of Jacksonville’s Talleyrand terminal.
   JaxPort’s board of directors on Monday unanimously approved a 20-year lease with options for two 10-year extensions at Talleyrand, effective Jan. 1, 2017. Crowley will expand its footprint at Talleyrand from 12 to 50 acres and relocate its Puerto Rico service from its private terminal on the St. Mary River.
   The deal comes in advance of Crowley’s plan to deploy two LNG-powered “Commitment-Class” container/roll-on, roll-off ships. The keel for the first of those ships was laid in January at the VT Halter shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., last month.
   Those two ships, to be called El Coqui and Taino, will have capacities for 2,400 TEUs and and nearly 400 vehicles. They will replace the triple ro/ro deck barges that Crowley currently operates between Jacksonville and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
   Crowley will continue to use its private barge terminal until all barge operations are phased out. There are no immediate plans for what it will do with the property after that, said Crowley spokesman Mark Miller.
   He added that the company plans to begin using the 12 acres it currently leases from JAXPORT for a new flat-deck barge it is deploying on the U.S. mainland-Puerto Rico trade in order to boost capacity starting in mid March.