First vessel calls at new Prince Rupert container terminal

First vessel calls at new Prince Rupert container terminal With a tap of a tug and the blast of a horn, a new era for the Port of Prince Rupert officially began as the first vessel to call at the Canadian port's new container terminal slid into it's berth Oct. 30.
   The COSCO Antwerp, a 5,400-TEU China Ocean Shipping Co. container vessel, spent Oct. 31-Nov. 1 at port's new Fairview Container Terminal before heading to scheduled calls at Vancouver and Seattle. The offloaded containers from the Antwerp carried Asian merchandise that will head via rail to retailers in the eastern United States.
   Billed as the closest ice-free North American port to Asia, Prince Rupert authorities have touted the facility's lack of congestion and one-day savings in shipping Asia-to-U.S. East Coast containers through the port, compared to more southerly ports.
   Located about 570 miles northwest of Seattle, the port offers the shortest route between the Far East and North America, reducing sailing to the North American West Coast by up to nearly 60 hours. The port also possesses the deepest harbor in North America and its on-dock rail facilities feed into the Canadian National's double-stack network.
   The Fairview project, more than a decade in the making, is a joint effort between terminal operator Maher Terminals, the Port of Prince Rupert and CNR.
   In August, COSCO became the first carrier to sign up with the new Prince Rupert facility. An additional deal signed with CNR provides the ocean carrier access to the railroad's high-capacity, double-stacked rail service to key U.S. and Canadian markets such as Chicago, Memphis, Nashville, Detroit, Toronto and Montreal.
   The Antwerp is part of the CKYH Alliance — comprising China-based COSCO, Korea-based Hanjin, Japan-based 'K' Line and Taiwan-based Yangming — which agreed in September to add the port to the South loop section of their Pacific North West (PNW) butterfly service.
   Five Hanjin ships and four COSCO ships are set to provide weekly service to the port, with the other lines to begin calling at the port in the future.
   The Fairview Container Terminal is expected to handle 500,000 TEUs in its first year of operation, and a second phase of construction, expected to be completed in 2012, is projected to handle 1.5 million TEUs annually. A second terminal is on track to be completed in 2015, port officials said, boosting the port’s annual traffic by 2 million TEUs to an estimated 4 million TEUs of total capacity. In addition, the terminal has space to expand well beyond 4 million TEUs, the port authority said.