Feature Article

Hidden Asset

The ongoing voyage of the Port of Richmond.

By Chip Jones

Maybe you've noticed them as you drive north on Interstate 95 toward downtown Richmond: Big metal boxes -- some orange, some blue -- stacked neatly near the highway. The containers rise up like some kind of temporary housing, or perhaps a huge self-storage center.
 

Actually, the roadside attraction is on the grounds of the Port of Richmond, a transportation hub the size of which is hard to fully absorb when you're whipping by at 60 mph. The high-rising containers are a sign of growth as the city-owned port attracts new shipments and finds ways to leverage its strategic position along the James River.
 

The South Richmond facility even has its own rail line, the 4.5-mile-long Deepwater Terminal Railroad, which is used by many companies in the interstate industrial corridor.
 

"Who does know it's there?" John Smith, chairman of the facility's marketing committee, asked rhetorically of the facility that opened shortly before the start of World War II. "It's clearly a hidden asset."

Gazing up at the container stacks, the port's executive director, Martin J. Moynihan joked, "I'm calling this the port condominiums now."

Oceangoing vessels carry most of the containers, but increasingly they arrive by truck and rail to be loaded onto ships. The 20- foot-long boxes contain everything from Virginia apples to machinery parts to cars bound for Canada and Iceland on ocean-going vessels operated by the facility's newest partner, Eimskip, Iceland's largest shipping company.
 

Eimskip became the second international shipping line to regularly make the 100-mile voyage upriver from the Atlantic Ocean at Cape Henry.

Independent Container Line, based in Antwerp, Belgium, makes weekly port calls as part of its container transportation between Belgium and the East Coast. It has been Richmond's principal port carrier since 1985, carrying exports such as consumer goods, textiles and chemicals.

Both shipping companies deliver imports such as frozen seafood, bottled water, consumer goods, chemicals and pharmaceuticals.

Eimskip officials said in November that they chose to travel upriver to Richmond's inland port because of customized service that they weren't getting in much larger docking facilities in Hampton Roads.

"The close proximity to I-95 was an advantage for cargo distribution," said Pamela Jennings, liner service manager at Eimskip USA.

Eimskip is expected to generate an initial $100,000 a year for the port, or about a 10 percent increase for the port's annual income of $1.1 million. The value of those goods is not tracked by the port, he said.
 

The port's two oceangoing shippers are served by a private contractor, Federal Marine Terminals, which employs dozens of hourly workers to unload cargo on the dock and sometimes to store it in warehouses.

Moynihan, a retired Coast Guard captain, has led the port since 1990. He has a staff of four.

With Eimskip, he said he is trying to help the shipper find other goods it might carry to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, two stops it makes on its return trip to Iceland.
 

The port also works with trucking or rail companies providing a secure facility to transfer goods from one transport mode to another.

"That's the story of the port," he said. "We receive cargo. We change the mode of shipment from truck to ship, ship to truck, rail to truck. And we provide the space to store it."
 

Rail shipments accounted for much of the port's 75 percent increase in shipments -- about 60,000 tons of in all -- that arrived by land in 2006. In all, the port handled more than 447,000 tons of freight last year.

That's only a fraction of the estimated 16 million tons handled last year by the Virginia Port Authority terminals in Norfolk, Newport News and Portsmouth. But Moynihan said his port offers an affordable alternative to bigger seaports, or to moving freight solely by truck or train.
 

A stroll around the grounds offers glimpses of the past and future. Signs of its New Deal-era origins remain, such as a faded bronze plaque on the back of the warehouse that declares, "Franklin D. Roosevelt, president of the United States, Richmond Municipal Terminal 1939."

Gazing at the storage facility with its thick concrete walls and barrel-shaped roof, Moynihan said, "They don't make'em like this anymore."
 

Nearby, a sign of more recent times sits along the road: A radiation detector truck that will be put into operation this year to check every container -- about 23,000 last year -- handled at the port.

The work extends beyond its docks to the James River shoreline -- including land across the river in Henrico County. "We've already spent a couple of million bucks" on preliminary work designed to deepen the port's turning basin. The project is meant to improve the safety for vessels that turn in the river, and make it more accessible for arriving vessels on the upper James River.
 

Now, Moynihan's hoping Congress approves an additional $425,000 to allow the Army Corps of Engineers to widen the basin by 165 feet.
 

That project should help the movement of all large vessels navigating the upper James, including oil barges and bulk vessels that serve nearby facilities, including DuPont.
 

"We hope this will go through this year, and we can start construction next fall," he said.

January 29, 2007-- Republished with permission from Richmond Times-Dispatch.