Cranes are harbingers of port growth

SWING INTO ACTION: The new mobile harbor crane, left, purchased by the Quonset Development Corporation, in use at the Port of Davisville. / COURTESY QUONSET DEVELOPMENT CORP.
SWING INTO ACTION: The new mobile harbor crane, left, purchased by the Quonset Development Corporation, in use at the Port of Davisville. / COURTESY QUONSET DEVELOPMENT CORP.

As the nation’s largest ports jockey for the new supersized cargo ships being built for a widening Panama Canal, maneuvering on a much smaller scale is happening in southern New England ports hoping to catch the spillover.
At the Port of Davisville in North Kingstown, the Quonset Development Corporation has bought a new mobile harbor crane, dredged the dockage area, hired a terminal operator and upgraded the pier and its rail connection in the past year.
Further up the bay in Providence, ProvPort officials are leveraging $10.5 million in federal funds to grow their own cargo traffic with two new harbor cranes and rail-line improvements.
And across the border in Massachusetts, New Bedford is also making a major play for shipping with a planned 28-acre, $100 million marine-commerce terminal being built by the state.
Providence has the longest history as a shipping port of the three locations, but Quonset is the furthest advanced in its expansion plans.
After receiving the new harbor crane in June, Quonset officials are working out customs procedures and, crucially, negotiating with cargo carriers to bring regular ship traffic to the port.
Once those routine shipping routes are established to Davisville, Quonset leaders see the capacity to move container cargo by sea as a major draw for Rhode Island companies inside and outside the business park.
“Our goal is to provide a different mode of transport for Rhode Island companies, another route that is more cost competitive,” said QDC Executive Director Steven J. King about the port expansion, which utilizes $22.7 million in federal grants.
“The first thing is to make our existing business community more effective and then make Quonset more attractive,” King added. “Then there is also the direct benefit of jobs created on the dock and terminal.”
ProvPort, a public-private partnership between Providence and Waterson Terminal Services, is awaiting the arrival of two mobile harbor cranes this spring that city officials hope will boost the port’s current bulk exporting traffic and also help grow now-limited exports.
“These cranes are a bet on starting to become an exporter,” said Providence Economic Development Director James Bennett. “Now it is about creating jobs, because manufacturing will want to be closer to the port because it’s cheaper to ship goods. We’re taking advantage of Interstate 95 without the traffic of Boston.” In addition to the new harbor cranes, ProvPort is also completing an extension of the rail line to the marine terminal that will allow carriers to move cargo directly from the rails to the docks.
The plan as described by Rhode Island leaders who pushed for the federal money for both port expansions is for Davisville and Providence to complement, instead of cannibalize, each other in the shipping market.
Right now ProvPort handles almost exclusively bulk cargo, which includes unpackaged commodities such as coal, scrap metal, salt, oil and jet fuel that Davisville does not touch.
The new harbor cranes will give Providence the capacity to handle containers and “project cargo,” unique, large items like bridge spans or windmill components. The cranes can operate on land or on two new barges that can float out into the harbor to offload ships too large or deep to reach the port.
Jason Kelly, executive vice president of Providence-based Moran Shipping, said the new cranes should significantly speed up ProvPort’s cargo turnaround time and be beneficial for growing bulk-commodity business.
“Port turnaround time is paramount when trading within the region,” Kelly said. “What has interested me about the cranes is they will be able to give a competitive advantage on the bulk side of things.”
Although coal has seen its prominence in the national energy portfolio decline in recent years, Kelly said the fossil fuel is a “hot commodity” on the East Coast that will be handled much more efficiently here when the new cranes arrive.
Waterson Terminal Services handled the first coal export from ProvPort last year, a shipment of Virginia-mined coal bound for Turkey.
At Davisville, which doesn’t have the landside space to handle bulk cargo or water depth to handle the larger ocean-going ships, the plan is to move into container traffic and “break bulk” cargo such as lumber or wire loaded as individual units.
Davisville’s primary maritime imports are automobiles arriving from all over the world.
Even with the new crane and infrastructure improvements, King said automobiles will continue to be the port’s focus. Only part of one of the two piers at the port will be used for cargo operations. King said once Quonset signs shipping companies to make regular stops at Davisville, the focus will turn to marketing the service to Rhode Island’s largest importers.
An example of a company that might benefit from shipping to Davisville, King said, is Ocean State Job Lot, which runs a distribution center in the Quonset Business Park.
Because the United States imports significantly more than it exports, King said imports will undoubtedly make up the majority of cargo handled at Davisville, but any exports increase the efficiency and productiveness of the port because containers and vessels coming in can then be used again going out.
Another wild card at Davisville is the potential use of the port as an import and staging area for offshore wind-turbine installation.
One of the first items to be handled by the new Davisville crane, which is now mostly idle until regular shipping starts, was the land-based wind turbine erected in North Kingstown late last year.
Deepwater Wind, which wants to build a five-turbine demonstration project off Block Island, has a lease option for 45 acres in Quonset to use as a staging area if it passes legal and financial hurdles.
Deepwater’s timeline has been pushed back repeatedly – it is now 2015 – but King said the new harbor cranes do not rely on Deepwater to be worth the federal investment.
“Basic marine transportation is like a hub and spoke,” said Evan H. Matthews, director of the port of Davisville. “We want to be a spoke, and we are positioned to be a connector to the major terminals wherever they develop. Now the only way to get things from New York or Boston is to truck it.”
It’s this type of shipping that industry leaders hope will grow once the Panama Canal project is finished (also now expected in 2015) as more cargo is transported by ship and importers look for more efficient ways to get it from the giant vessels to smaller ports.
But like offshore wind power, short-sea shipping, common in Europe, has yet to take off in the United States.
“It’s a Catch-22: you can’t prove the market without a ship and you can’t get a ship without proving the market,” said Paul Bea, principal of PHB Public Affairs, a maritime-industry lobbying group. •

No posts to display