Port of Virginia Opens Wider Channel to Speed Shipping
Channel wide enough for two-way traffic of ultra-large container ships.
The Port of Virginia has opened a wider shipping channel to allow two-way traffic of ultra-large container ships, the most significant upgrade of the port’s $1.4B Gateway Investment Program.
The wider channel will allow more container ships to berth and improve the efficiency of cargo movement through the port, reducing port stays for container vessels by an estimated 15%.
Ocean freight carriers are putting larger vessels into their East Coast port rotations, with additional ultra-large container vessels on order, Stephen Edwards, CEO of the Virginia Port Authority said, in a statement.
“Our partners know their vessels will not outgrow our capabilities,” Edwards said. “In Virginia, there is no concern for channel width, overhead draft restrictions, capacity or cargo handling infrastructure.”
At the same time that the port announced the opening of the wider channel this month, the U.S. Coast Guard’s Virginia Sector issued a rule change, called Business Rules for Ultra Large Container Vessels (ULCV), ending one-way travel restrictions for ULVC’s transiting through the Port of Virginia shipping channel, known as the Thimble Shoal Channel West Reach.
In addition to the channel widening, a $450M dredging project that will make the Port of Virginia’s channel the deepest on the East Coast is on track to be completed by the fall of 2025.
East Coast ports have been racing to upgrade facilities to be able to service new fleets of ultra-large container ships, which can have a maximum capacity of nearly 25K twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs).
The expansion of the Panama Canal in 2016 enabled the extra-large container vessels to reach the East Coast. During the pandemic, ocean freight companies began shifting cargo shipments to the East Coast in response to supply chain backups and risk from labor negotiations at West Coast ports.
In 2023, the Port of Virginia handled 3.3M TEUs, compared to 2.9M in 2019.
The port, known as Hampton Roads, began dredging Norfolk harbor in 2019 in collaboration with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The harbor is being deepened to 55 feet and the ocean approach to the port is being dredged to 59 feet deep.
The Port of Virginia, which is serviced by two Class 1 railroads, has a capacity of 5.8M TEUs and 152 semi-automated stacking cranes. According to its website, shipments from the port can reach two-thirds of the U.S. population within 48 hours.