South East Shipping News

8 tugs, 8 pilots, a dozen line handlers: no wonder it costs $250K to cross the new Panama Canal

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrQrKAku3e0

CMA CGM explains Cuba deal Wednesday, June 17, 2015

 

CMACGM explains Cuba deal

Wednesday, June 17, 2015   

 

 

 

French shipping giant CMACGM says the agreement it signed with Cuba is designed only to better serve the Cuban domestic market and is part of its strategy to develop its supply chain capabilities.

 

The company, which recently signed a concession agreement with Jamaica under which it will invest US$600 million to upgrade and expand Kingston Container Terminal (KCT) and operate it for 30 years, as well as spend US$130 million to dredge Kingston Harbour, was responding to concerns about the Cuba deal voiced by Mike Henry, the Opposition spokesman on transport and works.

 

Henry raised the matter after it was reported that CMACGM signed a logistics hub deal with Cuba during French President Francoise Hollande's visit to the Spanish-speaking island last month.

 

"The platform of Mariel's is a first step in Cuba's land logistics development," CMACGM Vice-President Mathieu Friedberg was reported as saying in a written statement.

 

Henry, in a statement to the Jamaica Observer, said that prior to the Jamaican Government signing the deal with Terminal Link CMACGM he had made very clear the concerns that the Opposition had over the agreement and as such raised the issue with the Office of the Contractor General, especially as it relates to the full ownership of Terminal Link and the ability of that entity to fast-track Jamaica's port development and the dredging of the port.

 

"I raise this as a great part of my concern was that the development of KCT would be done at the economic discretion of Terminal Link/CMA who, by the terms of reference of the agreement, are allowed to develop at their ability to finance the development and ongoing operations," he added.

 

"My concern is now heightened by the recent signing of an agreement in Cuba by CMACGM, with great fanfare and in the presence of French President Hollande and French Minister of Foreign Trade Matthias Felk, to develop the major Cuban port, as for me and others in the shipping industry it raises the question: How can you serve two masters?" Henry said.

 

But yesterday, CMACGM explained that the deal between it and its Cuban partner, AUSA, covers the operation of a logistics platform located in the Mariel Free Zone.

 

"The platform includes two warehouses and a cold store dedicated to the local Cuban market. The objective of the facility is only to better serve the Cuban domestic market, including warehousing/storage and distribution within the island," the French company's Press Department said in a statement.

 

"The Kingston agreement between the Jamaican Government and Terminal Link is of a different nature, as it concerns the creation of a terminal hub in the Caribbean, similar to other transshipment terminals used by CMACGM around the world (Malta, Tangiers, Port Kelang)," CMACGM said.

 

It added that the Kingston terminal is a major step for the CMACGM Group in anticipation of the enlargement of the Panama Canal and will accommodate some of the largest ships of the CMACGM fleet, trading from Asia, Europe or the Americas.

Loadstar insight into CMA CGM Kingston deal

 

CMA CGM consortium wins 30-year BOT deal for Kingston Container Terminal

By Gavin van Marle

04.08.2015 · Posted in Loadstar posts, Sea, Topics Add to favorites

After years of negotiation, the future of one of the Caribbean’s most important transhipment ports, the Jamaican hub of Kingston, appears finally settled. Ownership of its container terminal is to be handed over to a CMA CGM-controlled consortium.

The effective privatisation of Kingston container terminal in a deal worth $509m was confirmed by the Port Authority of Jamaica (PAJ) this week, which transferred ownership to CMA CGM on a 30-year build-operate-transfer (BOT) model.

This will see the terminal expanded in two phases, with capacity taken successively up to 3.2m teu and then 3.6m teu, and the port’s draught deepened to 14.2 metres by the end of 2016, and then to 15.5 metres.

CMA CGM formed a special purpose vehicle to bid for the project – Kingston Freeport Terminal Ltd – comprising its remaining port business, CMA Terminals, and Terminal Link, its container terminal operating company in which China Merchants has a 49% stake.

The consortium eventually ran out as the only bidder interested in the project.

Requests for expression of interest had been sent out to 22 port operating companies and three other “shipping industry groups” that had expressed an interest in the terminal. Five submitted bids: Singapore’s PSA; DP World; the CMA CGM-led consortium; Ports America; and a consortium led by Stevedoring Services of America that also included Israeli shipping line Zim.

PAJ revealed this week that its shortlist was PSA, DP World and CMA CGM. The former two subsequently dropped out following the emergence of another potential Jamaican transhipment project at a greenfield site at Goat Island, proposed by China Harbour Engineering Company.

PAJ said: “During the due diligence proces,s all the bidders expressed concern about the likely impact of the proposed Portland Bight/Goat Island Project on the regional industry, with the likely effect of adverse price competition.

“The Goat Island Project was constantly in the news. The project called for the development of an industrial park and a deepwater container terminal. The likely additional transhipment capacity coming on stream so close to the prospective concessionaire assuming responsibility for KCT was considered to represent a high level of risk that would likely threaten the viability of KCT,” it added.

However, there has been little development at the $1.5bn Goat Island project for over a year, and it was not mentioned in the recent annual speech by the governor general marking the opening of parliament.

The protracted nature of Kingston’s development has been further complicated by the after-effects of the global financial crisis. The port had long been a crucial North American transhipment hub for Zim, but its potential involvement was derailed by the huge financial hole, from which the carrier is only now beginning to emerge.

At the same time, new government debt management policy, whereby it eliminated guarantees of future loans taken on by statutory authorities, meant the port authority itself was unable to finance the box terminal’s expansion because it could neither access capital markets nor fund it from cash reserves.

As a result, the deal features an unusual arrangement for BOT schemes, whereby the concessionaire is responsible for the dredging – usually undertaken by the port authority – while the existing equipment at terminal is now owned by CMA CGM.

Both port and operator insist that the facility will operate on a common user basis, with CMA CGM saying its cargo at the port amounts to 35-40% of its total volume. The completion of dredging is set to coincide with the opening of the expanded Panama Canal, which will see 12,000-13,000 teu vessels able to pass its new locks.

Another factor will be how the port is included as a hub in the rotation of transatlantic and Asia-US east coast east-west services, and the north-south services between North and South America and South America and Europe, given the burgeoning levels of co-operation between CMA CGM and German shipping line Hamburg Sud, which currently focuses its Caribbean transhipment at Cartagena.

The possibilities of relay transhipment operations at Kingston are interesting, especially as the two lines, along with United Arab Shipping, are increasing the number of jointly-run services.

Gulftainer USA opens for business on June 12th

 

GT USA opens for business on June 12th

By: AJOT | Jun 04 2015 at 11:40 AM | Ports & Terminals  

Canaveral Cargo Terminal Set to Begin Operations;

Grand Opening Ceremony Features Terminal Tour and CMA CGM Group Vessel Call

GT USA’s new Canaveral Cargo Terminal (CCT), the only dedicated container terminal at Port Canaveral, will open for business on June 12, 2015, with an unveiling ceremony and cargo terminal tour showcasing the arrival of a vessel from CMA CGM Group, one of the world’s leading container shipping companies.

GT USA executives, along with Canaveral Port Authority officials, will welcome local, state, national and international public officials as well as industry leaders to the grand opening event.

GT USA is investing $100 million in the new state-of-the-art container terminal, infrastructure, equipment and people. Canaveral Cargo Terminal, initially developed on 20 acres with two berths and two gantry cranes, begins operations with capacity of 200,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) to serve large cargo vessels. CCT serves as an ideal gateway for containerized movements to the Florida market and beyond, and provides an excellent connection to the bustling consumption centers and growing number of distribution centers within Central Florida.

GT USA is the U.S. division of Gulftainer, the world’s largest, privately owned, independent terminal operator and logistics company. The company signed a 35-year agreement with the Canaveral Port Authority in 2014, marking Gulftainer’s first venture in the United States. GT USA offices are located at 445 Challenger Road, Suite 201, Cape Canaveral, FL 32920. For more information, go to www.gulftainer.com/us.

PMA, ILWU Announce West Coast Waterfront Contract

PMA, ILWU Announce West Coast Waterfront Contract

By: AJOT | Feb 23 2015 at 05:59 AM | Ports & Terminals  

FMCS, Cabinet Secretaries Played Key Roles

The Pacific Maritime Association and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union today announced a tentative agreement on a new five-year contract covering workers at all 29 West Coast ports. The deal was reached with assistance from U.S. Secretary of Labor Tom Perez and Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Deputy Director Scot Beckenbaugh. The parties will not be releasing details of the agreement at this time. The agreement is subject to ratification by both parties.

 

“After more than nine months of negotiations, we are pleased to have reached an agreement that is good for workers and for the industry,” said PMA President James McKenna and ILWU President Bob McEllrath in a joint statement. “We are also pleased that our ports can now resume full operations.”

Pressure begins on shippers, union to settle U.S. West Coast ports dispute

 

BY STEVE GORMAN

 

(Reuters) - Two U.S. Cabinet secretaries joined congressional leaders, three governors and a big-city mayor on Wednesday in pushing shipping lines and the dockworkers' union to settle a contract dispute that has led to months of turmoil and cargo backups at 29 West Coast ports.

Labor Secretary Tom Perez and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker weighed in as emissaries of President Barack Obama, who has come under rising political pressure to intervene in a conflict that has reverberated through the trans-Pacific commercial supply chain and could, by some estimates, cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars.

Worsening cargo congestion that the union and shippers blame on each other has slowed freight traffic since October at the ports, which handle nearly half of all U.S. maritime trade and more than 70 percent of the country's imports from Asia.

More recently, the shipping companies have sharply curtailed operations at the terminals, suspending the loading and unloading of cargo vessels for night shifts, holidays and weekends at the five busiest ports.

Work has continued around the clock in the dockyards, rail yards and terminal gates for most of the ports. Some smaller ports remained open to nighttime vessel operations as well.

The union and shipping companies each accuse the other side of instigating the disruptions to gain leverage in contract negotiations that have dragged on for nine months, appearing to hit a roadblock in the last two weeks.

ARBITRATION CITED IN SNAGGED TALKS

The bargaining agent for the shippers and terminal operators, the Pacific Maritime Association, has said talks hit a snag over a union demand for changes in the system of binding arbitration of contract disputes.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, representing 20,000 dockworkers, has insisted that an accord was near in the negotiations, which a federal mediator was assigned to oversee last month.

Perez joined the San Francisco talks for the first time on Tuesday, according to his spokeswoman, Xochitl Hinojosa, urging the parties to "come to an immediate agreement to prevent further damage to our economy."

He was joined for another round of talks on Wednesday, she said, by Pritzker and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, whose city encompasses the nation's busiest cargo port and lies adjacent to the No. 2 cargo hub at Long Beach.

Sources familiar with the situation said Perez huddled with each party separately, then briefly together on Tuesday, and met with both sides again on Wednesday as negotiations and "sidebars" stretched into the evening.

Meanwhile, the governors of the three West Coast states - California, Oregon and Washington - all Democrats, issued a statement on Wednesday welcoming Perez' involvement and calling for a quick resolution to the dispute.

Separately, eight congressional Republicans who chair House or Senate panels with jurisdiction over transportation and labor sent a letter to Obama on Wednesday urging him to take further unspecified action if a settlement is not reached by March 2 - two months from the date the federal mediator was appointed.

A Senate Commerce Committee spokeswoman, Lauren Hammond, said the letter's reference to "exercising additional leadership to resolve the situation" could be interpreted to mean invoking the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act.

Under that law, a president can seek a federal court order compelling the end to a work stoppage in a labor dispute if it poses a national emergency. But labor law experts have said it would be difficult to make such a case to a judge under current circumstances.

The union and the PMA have declined public comment since a federal mediator called for a news blackout last Friday.

The last time contract talks led to a full shutdown of the West Coast ports was in 2002, when the companies imposed a lockout that was lifted 10 days later under a court order sought by President George W. Bush under Taft-Hartley.

 

U.S. West Coast ports undergo partial shutdown

By: Reuters | Feb 12 2015 at 12:56 PM | Ports & Terminals  

The 29 ports on the U.S. West Coast were effectively closed to cargo freighters for the second time in less than a week on Thursday under a partial shutdown imposed by shipping lines and terminal operators in an escalating labor dispute with the dockworkers’ union.

The loading and unloading of cargo vessels was halted for 24 hours as of Thursday morning, and the companies said those operations will be suspended - as they were last weekend - again this coming Saturday, Sunday and Monday, unless a contract settlement with the union is reached.

The two sides said they planned to return to the bargaining table with a federal mediator on Thursday for the first time since last Friday.

Officials for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, representing 20,000 dockworkers who have been without a contract since July, say they are very close to a deal with the companies’ bargaining agent, the Pacific Maritime Association.

But the PMA says the talks hit a snag over a new demand by the union for changes in the system of binding arbitration of contract disputes.

In the meantime, inbound cargo vessels continued to stack up at anchor, with about two dozen freighters left idle on Thursday morning waiting for a berth outside the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the nation’s two busiest cargo hubs.

That number is likely to grow by the end of the weekend as additional vessels arrive from Asia with no place to park at the docks.

The affected ports handle nearly half of all U.S. maritime trade and more than 70 percent of imports from Asia. Slowdowns at those harbors have rippled through the U.S. commercial supply chain, disrupting deliveries of a wide range of goods, from agricultural produce to housewares and apparel.

Citing months of chronic slowdowns in freight traffic they blame the union for instigating, the companies said they were unwilling to pay union workers higher holiday and weekend wages while productivity declines and the cargo backlog grows.

Union shifts worked this Thursday and next Monday would command premium pay in observance of separate Presidents Day holidays falling on Abraham Lincoln and George Washington’s birthdays.

Union officials said the shippers were engaged in brinkmanship, using the partial shutdown to exaggerate the magnitude of the crisis and exert economic pressure on union members.

The West Coast ports were not left entirely dormant, however. The companies said work will continue in the dockyards, rail yards and terminal gates as they seek to clear some of the cargo containers already stacked up on the waterfronts.

The companies have accused the union of orchestrating work slowdowns since October to gain leverage in negotiations, saying the ports are at the brink of total gridlock. The union has faulted changes in shipping practices instituted by the carriers themselves for the worsening congestion.

Retail and manufacturing groups, which project that a full, extended shutdown of the ports could cost the U.S. economy $2 billion a day, have urged the Obama administration to intervene to keep the two sides at the bargaining table until a deal is done.

The White House has said it was monitoring the situation and that it was up to the parties to resolve their own differences.

Chinese billionaire to risk war to build a canal across Nicaragua

 

By Joshua Partlow February 4 at 3:30 AM  

PUNTA BRITO, Nicaragua — One of the largest engineering projects in history would start here, on this desolate and pristine crescent of dark-sand Pacific beach.

From in front of the hammock-swinging shrimpers on the porches of their tin-and-wood shanties, the trench would run east in sinuous curves up through the mangroves and banana fields until it reaches the shores of Central America’s largest freshwater lake, then cut across the Caribbean highlands and through indigenous territory, ending its journey 172 miles away on the beaches of the Atlantic.

They call it the Grand Inter-Oceanic Canal: an audacious $50 billion plan by an obscure Chinese billionaire to cross Central America and challenge the Panama Canal for the world’s cargo traffic. And some in Nicaragua are gearing up for the fight of their lives to stop it.

“For a country as poor as Nicaragua,” said Roonell Carrillo, a cattle farmer who works along the proposed canal route, “this is an enormous risk.”

Last month, on a riser erected next to Carrillo’s farm, the son of President Daniel Ortega, the former Marxist guerrilla, stood alongside Wang Jing, a Chinese telecom magnate, to herald the official start of construction. In reality, little physical work is being done besides widening access roads, and major doubts remain about many aspects of the project, including whether Wang can afford to build it.

Massive canal project in Nicaragua

Wang Jing, a Chinese billionaire, plans to build a canal across Nicaragua to challenge Panama for the world’s cargo traffic. The canal would be three times as long as Panama’s and able to accommodate larger ships. Opponents of the project worry what the regional impact will be if the proposed Grand Inter-Oceanic Canal is ever built.

(Sources: HKND Group, China Railway Siyuan Survey and Design Group)

According to interviews with Chinese media, Wang was born in 1972 in Beijing, studied traditional Chinese medicine, and worked as a school principal. Then he joined a government-affiliated telecom company that went private in 2009. His firm grew rapidly into the largest privately owned science and technology company listed on the Chinese stock market and made him one of the country’s richest men.

President Ortega granted Wang’s canal company, HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co. Ltd, or HKND Group, a 50-year concession, which would give Nicaragua only a small return — $10 million per year — for the first decade of operation, then increasing percentages of the profits in subsequent years. But even Wang’s Nicaraguan construction partners know little about his other investors or whether the Chinese government, which has denied involvement, is backing the project.

“It would be a relief for me to know that the Chinese government was behind this rather than just an entrepreneur,” said Benjamin Lanzas, head of Nicaragua’s construction industry group, who has met Wang and whose company has contracts for parts of the project. “For one investor, that’s a lot of money.”

Nicaraguan government officials say the canal could revolutionize the economy of the second-poorest country in the Americas. The scope of the project is epic: The canal would be three times longer than Panama’s and accommodate larger ships capable of carrying up to 25,000 containers. Construction executives say that to build it would require twice as much cement per year as is currently manufactured in all of Central America.

The plan, according to company presentations and reports, includes building new roads, bridges, power plants and an airport. Plus two new ports, one for each ocean, lighthouses and locks, worker camps and tourist resorts, ferry terminals and a free trade zone. HKND has estimated that its canal could eventually serve 5 percent of the world’s shipping traffic, and Nicaraguan officials say it will double the size of the country’s economy. The company estimates it will take five years to finish, but even its supporters consider that overly optimistic.

But as the project ramps up, fresh opposition is rising to meet it. Residents along the route have organized protests and marches. Dozens of people have been arrested, some of them allegedly beaten by police.

Among the concerns are environmental questions: Opponents say the dredging and earth-moving will pollute wetlands and rivers and foul Lake Nicaragua, an important source of drinking water and irrigation. The amount of earth to be moved could fill 2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools. Among the more sensitive parts of the route, apart from the lake, are the Indio Maiz ecological reserve in the southeastern part of the country, and the mangroves and marine reserves near the Brito beach, said David Blaha, a partner with the U.K.-based firm, Environmental Resources Management, which has been hired by HKND to consult on the project. ERM’s environmental impact assessment has not yet been completed.

Residents burn tires at a blockade on the Pan-American highway during the groundbreaking day of the $50 billion transoceanic waterway construction project predicted to rival the Panama Canal, in Managua, Nicaragua, Monday, Dec. 22. 2014. (Oscar Navarrete/AP)

“Obviously you can’t build a project of this magnitude, in a location like this, without there being significant impacts,” Blaha said. “The question is: Can those impacts be mitigated? And do the benefits of the project outweigh the impacts?”

Supporters of the project argue that rural poverty has already led to deforestation and the economy needs to move away from its subsistence on commodities.

“I think the country’s poverty is a bigger problem than the environmental concerns,” said Arturo Cruz, a former Nicaraguan ambassador to Washington and a professor at the INCAE business school outside Managua. “If we don’t achieve a more prosperous country in the next five to 10 years — with or without the canal — we will see severe damage to the environment.”

Lanzas, who has flown, walked or driven the bulk of the canal route, said the longer eastern portion is sparsely populated. On his office computer, he flipped through aerial pictures of empty rolling hills. “Nothing. Nothing. Nothing,” he said. But asked about the western sliver of land between the Pacific and the lake, he said: “That’s a different story.

“In the Pacific, it’s a lot more complicated.”

Thousands of jobs created

Rafael Bermudez opened his jean jacket to reveal his holstered pistol.

“We don’t want the canal,” he said. “And we don’t want this president.”

Bermudez, a farmer and former guerrilla who fought alongside Daniel Ortega against the Somoza dictatorship in the ’70s, now accuses his onetime comrade of betraying his country to the Chinese.

“He sold us out like animals,” he said.

HKND estimates that the canal would create 50,000 jobs, but thousands of them would go to imported Chinese workers, and construction would also displace tens of thousands of people. Bermudez says he will be forced off his banana farm.

“We’re campesinos. We don’t have anything to do with any canal. We’re farmers. The people in the capital eat from the work of our hands,” he said. “I don’t want to sell. This is what I live from. I want this land for my kids.”

One of Bermudez’s fellow opponents, Octavio Ortega, the president of the Foundation for the Development of the Municipalities of Rivas, a town close to the canal route on the Pacific portion, has been organizing marches against the canal. He said police beat him in the face with a rifle butt during one protest last month and broke his left arm. He was jailed for eight days, he said, and kept in a cell where food was passed through a slit twice a day.

“We are being repressed savagely,” he said.

Recent polls have indicated that a majority of Nicaraguans support the canal, even those living close to the route, but by some measurements that support is dropping. Some of the opponents argue that the canal will compromise the country’s sovereignty.

“The government is allowing foreigners to get all the land without any obligation to the government or the people,” said Roger Guido Narbaez, a farmer from the Rivas area. “They have total impunity.”

Guido and others said that if the Nicaraguan government persists with the project, it could generate violence, a grim possibility for a country whose years of bloody civil war is not far past.

“If this government isn’t capable of understanding the disaster that this is going to be for this country,” he said, then violence “is going to be the only solution.”

‘We just want answers’

The parade of cameramen, census takers, Chinese engineers and environmentalists has been enough to convince the fishermen who live along the Brito beach that something is changing in their tiny village — reachable after miles on a rutted dirt track — but they’re still not sure what.

“Whatever it is, we can’t do anything to stop it,” said Fiel Nogera, a 60-year-old fisherman. “We just want answers.”

The only other people in Brito are a small contingent from the Nicaraguan Navy who watch for passing boats loaded with Colombian cocaine. Third Sgt. Pedro Baptes, 28, surveying the empty beach and the silent inlet, thought he knew what was in store.

“All this will be underwater,” he said.

Simon Denyer in Beijing contributed to this report.

 

Agriculture Transportation Coalition urges the President to act on the West Coast Port crisis

Agriculture Transportation Coalition urges the President to act on the West Coast Port crisis
By: AJOT | Nov 17 2014 at 05:20 PM | Ports & Terminals

The impact of West Coast port disruption is becoming increasingly dire for U.S. agriculture and forest products exporters. Christmas trees are not being exported and will miss the holiday season in Asia completely. Potatoes are not being exported and the cargo will likely be a total loss for the farmers whose entire year is dependent upon current shipments. Foreign customers are already canceling orders and turning to other countries to satisfy their needs.

The consequences are being felt throughout the country. The railroads are unable to bring agriculture products from the Midwest and the South to West Coast ports because of the labor slowdown at the ports. At the same time, the ocean carriers are passing on their increased cost by imposing draconian congestion surcharge fees on the U.S. exporter, who cannot pass them on to the customer. It is rendering our agriculture and forest products non-competitive in the global marketplace. It is destroying the President’s National Export Initiative. It could take years for our agriculture to recover lost foreign markets.

It is time for the White House to step in. It has tools to do so; we ask the President to intervene personally in order to get the longshore labor back to work, end the slow downs, and compel the terminal operators and the ILWU to complete work on their contract, which expired at the end of June.

The damage to the U.S. economy is profound as agriculture is now the largest export from the United States, and one of the primary areas in which the U.S. is globally preeminent. But that preeminence is now threatened, both immediately, and for some sectors, permanently.

Florida East Coast Railway and PortaMiami announce plans to announce a new service that was to begin two years ago, this time in 2015. Stay Tuned

In January 2015, FECR and PortMiami will hold an event celebrating this new service. For more information visit www.TheSunshineGateway.com

So why are they telling us this now?
(Miami – October 17, 2014) -- Florida East Coast Railway (FECR) and PortMiami, through a strategic alliance, are offering the Sunshine Gateway service, which includes on-dock intermodal rail capabilities. This seamless ship to rail transfer allows the port to handle additional volumes and ensures that shipments move more quickly and efficiently with the potential to reach 70 percent of the United States population in four days or less.

“Our goal has always been to facilitate the process of cargo shipments for fast and efficient delivery to our customers,” said Juan M. Kuryla, PortMiami Director. “Through our partnership with FECR, we are expanding access for shipments coming into and out of the port to reach their final destinations seamlessly and with greater reliability.”

Another proactive step has been the PortMiami -50 ft. Deep Dredge Project enabling the port to handle larger TEU vessels. Kuryla stated, “Our investments in infrastructure and collaboration with innovative providers like FECR, ensure that we are well positioned for the Panama Canal expansion.”

President and CEO James R. Hertwig noted, “In today’s global marketplace, shippers often need solutions that go beyond the United States borders and involve multiple modes to move goods from the point of origin to the final destination. In order to meet the needs of supply chain managers, it is important for various modes of transportation to work together seamlessly. We are pleased with the positive impact we have seen as a result of our partnership with PortMiami and look forward to continuing to provide effective solutions for shippers.”

In January 2015, FECR and PortMiami will hold an event celebrating this new service. For more information visitwww.TheSunshineGateway.com

August 21, 2010

On dock rail elevated to high priority at Port of Miami
Port of Miami puts rail project on fast track

The Port of Miami unveiled a project designed to increase its ability to move cargo quickly in anticipation of the Panama Canal expansion.

July 13, 2011

Port of Miami closer to on-dock rail

Miami rail link reconstruction begins Friday

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Construction will begin this Friday to restore Port of Miami on-dock rail capability courtesy of the Florida East Coast Railway. The $50 million project will rehabilitate a bridge damaged and by Hurricane Wilma in 2005, while construction of the Intermodal Rail Yard on Dodge Island will enable Miami to accommodate super cargo ships scheduled to arrive in 2014 with the expansion of the Panama Canal.

The ceremonial groundbreaking Friday is expected to include Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado, and other elected officials.

PortMiami and Florida East Coast Freight Rail coming back to Miami!

(MIAMI, September 30, 2013) - In a major boost to South Florida’s cargo and logistics industries Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) is restoring freight rail service between PortMiami and major U.S. markets. The Port has been without on-dock rail service since 2005 when Hurricane Wilma destroyed the Port’s rail bridge, but thanks to a federal grant the tracks have been restored and regular service is scheduled to begin next month.