Construction of a new container terminal has officially begun on the site of a former steel mill developers hope will spur a change in mid-Atlantic intermodal shipping.
Tradepoint Atlantic and Terminal Investment Ltd. broke ground on the Sparrows Point Container Terminal, a 168-acre marine box hub and on-dock rail facility. The partners say the project is the first U.S. container terminal in decades to be privately financed.
Tradepoint Atlantic since 2014 has been redeveloping the 3,300-acre site of a Bethlehem Steel mill southeast of Baltimore’s city center as a shipping and logistics center. TIL is co-managed by leading ocean liner Mediterranean Shipping Co. of Geneva and U.S.-based Blackrock (NYSE: BLK), the world’s largest private equity firm.
The partners plan to spend $1.2 billion to develop the 168-acre terminal and on-dock rail, which they hope to plug into an I-95 East Coast doublestack network offering direct connections to the Midwest, as well as eastern seaboard destinations. It will have annual capacity of more than 1 million containers, with berthing for two ultra-large container vessels and seven ship-to-shore cranes.
The terminal’s first berth is to be completed by 2028, with full build-out in 2030. It is located opposite TPA’s bulk handling terminal.
The May 1 groundbreaking ceremony comes just months after CSX (NASDAQ: CSX) completed clearance work for doublestack trains on Baltimore’s Howard Street tunnel. The century-old route had been a chokepoint for intermodal trains, but reports on social media said doublestack traffic through Baltimore began moving this week.
Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.
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