Portsmouth terminal reopens in Port of Virginia

After a three-year idle, the first trucks carrying export boxes will roll through the terminal gate Monday.    The Port of Virginia on Monday will reopen its Portsmouth Marine Terminal to cargo operations after being closed for nearly three years.
   The port authority said the first trucks carrying export containers will enter the terminal gate at 8 a.m.
   “Reopening the berth at PMT to container operations is the first phase of a larger plan to establish the terminal as a multi-use facility and improve service to our customers,” said John F. Reinhart, chief executive officer and executive director of the Virginia Port Authority, in a statement. 
   The first vessel call is scheduled for early October, and going forward, the 30-acre operation will process between 75,000 containers and 100,000 containers a year. “The operation will be ‘wheeled,’ or containers-on-chassis; there will be no stacked containers except for those units in the empty yard. Navis N4 is the terminal operating system,” VPA said.
   The terminal is owned by the VPA and will be operated by Virginia International Terminals. The International Longshoremen’s Association will handle the vessels, gate and terminal services.
   “Reconstituting a portion of PMT will provide some relief at Virginia International Gateway and NIT, as both of those terminals are busy and pushing their capacity limits,” Reinhart said. “PMT is a deep-water facility that will serve an important role for our purposes, but over the long-term as a facility that handles many different types of cargo: bulk, breakbulk and ro/ro.”
   PMT first opened in 1967 and, for 43 years, the 287-acre facility served thousands of ships and processed large volumes of containers and general cargo.
   In late 2010, following the negotiation of a 20-year operating lease for VIG, VPA decided to close PMT. “By January 2011, all former PMT customers and cargo had been consolidated at VIG, allowing the port to achieve the full benefit of that facility’s automation and efficiency. For more than three years, PMT was largely dormant,” VPA explained.
   In spring 2014, a short-term cooperative agreement between the port and Pasha Automotive Services restarted cargo activities at PMT. During a two-month period, Pasha processed more than 6,000 Chrysler-Jeep vehicles at PMT for export to the Asia-Pacific market.
   VPA said “similar operations hold promise for PMT’s future.” Reinhart commented, “We’re always open to evaluating options for maximizing the facility to generate economic benefits for the Commonwealth and jobs for our region.”