Local ports are poised for gain, official says

NORFOLK

A plan for a 500,000-square-foot warehouse at Portsmouth Marine Terminal that had been approved and then withdrawn is back on the table.

"We've finally gotten an engineering firm to come down and say, 'Yes, we can build a warehouse there,' " said Joe Dorto, president and CEO of Virginia International Terminals Inc., in his 32nd annual "state of the port" speech Wednesday in Norfolk.

The reconfigured project, Dorto added, will "cost a little bit more money."

In May, the Virginia Port Authority board approved $25 million in funding for the plan to accommodate a paper-and-pulp import-export business. The project fell through when engineers said the soil wasn't strong enough to support the rolls of paper that would move across the site.

The plan will go back before the board at its meeting Tuesday, Dorto said after his talk sponsored by the Hampton Roads Global Commerce Council.

The top priorities of the port include filling Portsmouth and Newport News marine terminals with non-containerized cargo that moves by pallets or bales, or in the holds of ships, Dorto said.

Others include building rail volume and focusing on economic development, drawing more industry to the area as a way to "lock in ships."

Rail volume at the port last year was up 26 percent. While rail accounts for about 30 percent of the port's business, Dorto said he thinks it could grow to 50 percent when the expanded Panama Canal opens in 2014.

In his speech, Dorto lamented that volume growth at the port in the year past was just 2 percent, half of what he projected a year ago.

This year, though, he predicted the start of a turnaround, with growth in the 4 to 5 percent range.

APM Terminals Virginia is now operating at about 63 percent capacity and Norfolk International Terminals at 70 percent, Dorto said.

The room for growth at those facilities, including an expansion at APM and buildout of the planned terminal at Craney Island, gives the port unparalleled opportunities among East Coast ports, he said.

Mediterranean Shipping Co., the world's second-largest container shipper, recently named Hampton Roads the most improved of all the U.S. ports it calls on.

At least six shipping lines have visited the port recently, including Tokyo-based NYK Line this week, to see how prepared it is to handle bigger ships once the expanded Panama Canal opens.

Hampton Roads is ready for that business, and the growth that will accompany it, Dorto said.

"If I had one wish, I wish I was 41 instead of 61 so I could be here to see all that happen."

Robert McCabe, 757-446-2327, robert.mccabe@pilotonline.com