Page 37 - Port of Baltimore - May/June 2019

SECOND 50-FOOT-DEEP
BERTH CONSTRUCTION
BEGINS IN 2019
BY TODD KARPOVICH
The Evergreen Triton, with a capacity to handle 14,424 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) containers, visited the Port of Baltimore, becoming the largest container ship to ever visit Maryland.
The supersized ship was able to call at the Port of Baltimore because the Port’s infrastructure allows it to handle some of the largest ships in the world. The Port is further boosting capacity with the construction of a second 50-foot-deep berth set to begin in 2019.
“This was actually nine years in the making when we entered into a private-public
partnership with Ports America,” said Maryland Department
of Transportation Maryland Port
Administration (MDOT MPA) Executive Director James J. White about the arrival of the Evergreen Triton. “We knew with a new set of locks coming with the Panama Canal, bigger ships calling at the U.S. West Coast would now have the ability to get to the East Coast. So, that created a huge opportunity for all East Coast ports.
“Because we have such a huge population, we have a lot to offer to the ship owners. The Panama Canal was one part of our strategic planning for
the future. The other part was we knew there was going to be consolidation in the maritime industry where we went from smaller ships and medium- sized ships to actually ship owners sharing space on ships. That’s what you see here.”
Previously, the largest container ship to visit the Port of Baltimore was the 11,000-TEU container ship Gunde Maersk, which arrived at the Port of Baltimore in October. Thanks to a public-private partnership between MDOT MPA and Ports America Chesapeake, the Port of Baltimore is
one of the few ports on the East Coast to have a 50-foot-deep channel and a 50-foot-deep berth necessary to accommodate the mega-ships traveling through the recently expanded Panama Canal. Ports America Chesapeake operates Seagirt Marine Terminal, the Port’s container terminal.
The Port had a record-breaking year in 2018 when 43 million tons of international cargo was handled
by the state-owned public and the privately owned
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BILL MCALLEN