Zero congestion and increased capacity means fewer delays and minimal demurrage fees
On January 8, 2019, the M/V Zhen Hua 25 departed Shanghai, China with two new super post-Panamax container cranes bound for South Philadelphia. The two behemoths will navigate a lengthy global trek before reaching the Delaware River for an expected mid-March arrival to the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal. The arrival will mark another important milestone in the comprehensive modernization project underway at Packer, and highlights a key competitive advantage for shippers looking to improve time to market on the East Coast of the United States.
“Our terminal is currently under capacity, meaning we could handle rerouted surplus bound for nearby congested terminals immediately without blinking an eye,” said David Whene, President of Greenwich Terminals, operator of the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal. “With ship productivity as high as 140 gross moves per hour, turn-times of under 40-minutes, and an abundance of available chassis, Packer Avenue offers carriers unparalleled efficiency in reaching the Mid-Atlantic region and beyond.”
Boasting a $300 million public-private investment, the Packer Avenue Terminal is quickly becoming a model of 21st century port operations. The forthcoming completion of the Delaware River Deepening Project will provide a full 45-foot shipping channel through Philadelphia, allowing vessels as large as 14,500 TEUs —among the largest in the world— to traverse into the Port.
This deepening project is timed perfectly with the arrival of the new super post-Panamax cranes, which will bring the total operational cranes on the terminal to six (a seventh due to arrive August 2019). This increase in capacity will only lead to improvements on the already stellar 40-minute turn times for containers coming in and out. Terminal-wide improvements in lighting, electrification and warehousing add to a 360-degree modernization that has helped drive overall throughput capacity for PhilaPort to one million TEUs per year.
“We have always known that PhilaPort’s market potential was significantly greater then reflected in past volumes,” said Jeff Theobald CEO of PhilaPort. “Now with our capital improvements nearing their completion, shippers should know that we have excess capacity and that we are open for new business.”
Flexible work hours, abundant access to trucking, multimodal rail and an increasing network of distribution centers in the region all make Philadelphia an ideal destination for a wide variety of import products. And Philadelphia’s location at the heart of the U.S. Northeast Corridor places goods within a days reach of 40 percent of the U.S. population, the most lucrative market in the world.
PhilaPort has seen 166 percent container growth in the last decade and has broken all previous records in 2018 by handling 600,000 TEUs. The surge in cargo volume is welcomed and PhilaPort’s Packer Avenue Marine Terminal is ready to take its position as one of the premier cargo gateways in the United States.
Source: PhilaPort (Additional information about the port at CruiseMapper)