Everglades expects three key projects to boost Asia traffic
Port Everglades, 30 miles north of the Port of Miami in Florida, expects to streamline operations and boost volumes after completing three critical expansion projects that are currently in the pipeline, Cargonews Asia reports.
The port expects to complete the projects over the next six years and will add five berths, widen and deepen the channel to 50 feet and bring freight rail into the port.
“We’re not just building for the expansion of the Panama Canal; we’re building for the next 25 years,’’ said Michael Vanderbeek, director of business development at Port Everglades, told reporters recently.
Exactly how trade routes may change after the Panama Canal expansion and which ports will be the big winners is the multi-billion-dollar question all ports in the US are asking, he added.
Port Everglades’ main competitor is the Port of Miami. “We are exactly the same size as the Port of Miami,” Vanderbeek told Cargonews Asia on the sidelines of a recent conference in Shenzhen. “We did 880,000 TEUs in 2011 while Miami did just a bit more at 900,000 TEUs.’’
Everglades’ throughput breakdown shows 35 percent of the port’s box volumes are from Central America, 21 percent from the Caribbean, 21 percent South America, seven percent East Asia and three percent Middle East and the rest, according to Vanderbeek.
He admitted seven percent from Asia was small “but we feel there is an opportunity to grow that figure’’.
The three projects are the US$122 million work on the Southport Turning Notch that will add another five berths, elevating Eller Drive/I-595 to go over the FEC rail tracks, which will ease congestion at the port – and is the first step to construction of an Intermodal Container Transfer Facility at Southport – and deepening of the port.
The port’s cornerstone project is expansion of the Southport Turning Notch, which will transform a single-berth facility into one with five berths with the potential to accommodate a sixth vessel. The expansion will involve lengthening the berth from 900 ft to 2,400 ft.
Port Everglades realises it must widen and deepen its channel to 50 ft to remain competitive with other ports in the southeast that are already gearing up for the Panama Canal expansion. It doesn’t want to be left out of the race for deep water.
The dredging project calls for deepening and widening of the outer entrance channel from an existing 45 ft depth and 500 ft width to a 57 ft depth and 800 ft width, as well as deepening the inner entrance channel and main turning basin from 42 ft to 50 ft.
The total cost is estimated at $320 million, with the port committing $131 million and expecting Federal funding for the balance.
“I don’t think we will get any vessels above 8,000 TEU after the expansion of the canal – 8,000 to 9,000 TEUs is what we are looking at in the long term,’’ Vanderbeek said.
“We have 42 ft but that’s not deep enough to handle fully-laden 8,000-9,000 TEU vessels. We are digging to 50 ft to make sure we have no draught issues with such ships.’’
“Right now vessels coming in from Asia are between 3,000-5,000 TEUs. We also handle smaller feeder vessels from Freeport, Bahamas,’’ he added.
As the first step to develop a near-dock Intermodal Container Transfer Facility (ICTF), the port broke ground on the Eller Drive Overpass project in July 2011. The Eller Drive Overpass will elevate I-595/Eller Drive to allow the trains to access the port at ground level. The project is expected to be completed by mid-2014 at a cost of $42.5 million.
A 30-year lease and operations agreement between Broward County and the Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) to build and operate the ICTF was approved by the Broward County Commission in January 2012. The ICTF will be used to transfer international containers between ship and rail instead of having trucks haul the containers to and from off-port rail terminals, either at Andrews Avenue in Fort Lauderdale or in Hialeah in Miami-Dade County.
“The $53 million project is not an on-dock facility but a near-dock facility,’’ Vanderbeek clarified.
The FEC also plans to relocate its existing domestic intermodal service from Andrews Avenue to the ICTF at Port Everglades. Once completed, the ICTF is expected to reduce congestion on interstate highways and local roadways and reduce harmful air emissions by diverting an estimated 180,000 trucks from the roads by the year 2027.
“Using the intermodal service we can move containers to as far north as Atlanta and Charlotte. South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama are markets we can absolutely access,’’ said Vanderbeek.
There are a couple of forces driving the container volumes at Port Everglades, said Vanderbeek. One is the South Florida consumer market.
“The Miami region, including Port Lauderdale and Hollywood, has six million people. Most of the population is in the southern half of the state, totalling 15 million. That’s the reason there is a much larger consumer market than in the north. The total state population of Florida is close to 20 million,” he said.
“In the peak season, which is basically from November to April, the population swells to as much as 80 million,” added Vanderbeek. “A lot of the traffic is from Canada and New York with people escaping the bitterly cold winters.’’
Florida is popular for its tropical weather, theme parks and beaches. Port Everglades is one of the top three luxury cruise ports in the world with 70 percent of their port business generated by cruise companies and the remainder from container shipping. The Port of Miami and Port Canaveral are Florida’s other cruise hubs.
On its closest competitor, Vanderbeek said the strategy of Port Everglades was slightly different to that of Miami. “They concentrate on import cargo while we do mostly export, such as waste paper and scrap iron, as well as perishables,” he said.
However, Miami was more popular among Asia shippers than Everglades, Venderbeek admitted. “They have done a great job of marketing and we need to do a better job ourselves. The three key projects and the expansion of the Panama Canal gives us an opportunity to grow our seven percent Asian traffic,” Vanderbeek declared.