Wilmington, N.C. expects boost from new intermodal service

The new service from the Port of Wilmington in North Carolina will connect with Charlotte starting this spring, and an another CSX intermodal hub in Raleigh is slated for a 2019 opening.    CSX Corp. plans to start an intermodal service connecting the Port of Wilmington, N.C. with Charlotte within the next four months, the North Carolina Ports Authority said in a statement.
   “We haven’t had an intermodal service in over 20 years and bringing it back is huge,” said Cliff Pyron, communications manager for the North Carolina Ports Authority. Pryon said a weekly unit train will connect the port’s ondock rail terminal with the authority’s inland terminal in Charlotte, which is “strategically located at the heart of manufacturing and distribution sites in the Southeast, serving the I-85 and I-77 distribution corridors.”
   “It will take trucks off the road and ease congestion,” he added.
   The port already moves breakbulk and bulk cargo to and from the port via CSX.
   In addition, CSX railroad announced last week plans to build a new ntermodal hub just outside Raleigh, a move Paul Cozza, the authority’s chief executive officer, described to the News and Observer as a “game changer for us.”
   “It is further advancing the governor’s 25-year vision in terms of intermodal service and will generate jobs and economic development throughout Johnston County and the State,” said Cozza.
   The intermodal hub, scheduled to open in 2019 in Selma, about 30 miles outside of Raleigh, near where I-40 and I-95 meet, and will give the port “access to basically CSX’s whole network, so we can send boxes to Ohio, Chicago, and beyond,” said Pyron. That will allow the port to “move freight not just regionally, but nationally as well.”
   However, WRAL television reported that Wednesday night the Johnston County, N.C. board of commissioners said they do not support plans for the terminal “at the footprint the project’s advocates had envisioned.”
   According to a statement from the board, it continues to believe the terminal “represents economic development opportunities for Eastern North Carolina, including Johnston County, and hopes that alternative sites can be identified that reconciles the project’s location needs with the desires of property owners that are willing to sell their land.”
   At the Port of Wilmington, liner services include:
     • A transatlantic service operated by Independent Container Line;
     • Two services to Asia operated by the CKYH alliance — the AWE1 to Ningbo, Shanghai and Busan on which Zim started moving boxes this week, as well as the AWE3 to Hong Kong, Yantian-Shenzhen, Kaohsiung, Shanghai and Busan;
     • A Maersk/Sealand service to South and Central America;
     • A new Maersk service that is currently offering only inbound service to Wilmington;
     • And a Bahri service that uses multipurpose ships to move roll-on/roll-off, project and container cargo to the Mediterranean, Middle East, and India.
   “We are coming off a banner year,” said Pyron, who said Wilmington handled 297,612 TEUs in 2015, an 18 percent increase over 2014 and a new record for the port.
   The largest ships calling Wilmington today are about 4,500 TEUs, but Pyron said the port is widening its turning basin at a cost of $16 million to accommodate the larger ships that are expected to arrive at U.S. East Coast ports when the expanded Panama Canal opens later this year. That work is expected to be completed in May.
   It is also adding several new post-Panamax container cranes and replacing a berth so that two post-Panamax ships can be worked simultaneously at the port.
   About $100 million is being spent to improve the port, said Pyron. The port is investing $30 million, and he aid there is a $35 million recurring line item in the state’s budget this year and next for port improvements.